The Business and Technical Case for Continuous Commissioning for Enhanced Building Operations - A Case Study: Alamo Community College District, San Antonio, Texas, USA

Abstract

This paper provides a business and technical case study for the Continuous Commissioning®(CC®) 1 process developed by the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL) at Texas A&M University System for building optimization. The business and technical advantages for CC include: 1) project risk mitigation, 2) enhanced occupant comfort and productivity, 3) retrofit identification and 4) a high return on investments [average ROI of 0.5]. ESL applied CC from 2002 to 2004 at Alamo Community College District (ACCD) with conditioned space of 2.35 million square feet, as part of a broader energy efficiency project. The project has produced savings of $510,400 [US]in 23 months with $315,000 from CC alone in first 18 months. The total project cost was $3.5 million [US] and included the cost of CC, deferred maintenance and other Energy Cost Reduction Measures (ECRMs) with a payback of 6.7 years.