Green Communities Project
Bellingham, WA
A major renovation to three multifamily towers in one of Washington's largest cities
- Utility Bill Analysis
- On-site Performance Assessment
- Model Calibration
- 90.1 Appendix G Energy Modeling
- Measurement and Verification (M&V)
- Utility Incentive Coordination
Funded by a $9.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)/American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus funding, the Green Communities Project’s stated goal is to “facilitate transformational energy efficiency and ‘green’ retrofits to substantively increase energy efficiency and environmental performance of public housing properties and thereby reduce energy costs, generate resident and PHA energy savings, and reduce Green House Gas emissions attributable to energy consumption.”
For this project, O’Brien360 started with an in-depth evaluation of existing building performance, including regression analysis of historical utility data, physical building audits, and targeted short-term sub-metering to develop calibrated, baseline energy models. These models were leveraged to evaluate the impacts of individual energy conservation measures, as well as complete a 90.1-2004 Appendix G analysis to demonstrate grant compliance. Ongoing activities include the development and execution of an IPMVP compliant measurement and verification protocol, continued analysis of utility meter and sub-metered energy use data and coordination of utility incentive applications.