Office of the Future Federal Building Demonstration

This project will be performing “proof of concept” testing of a controls system, that claims the ability to provide tuning, scheduling, daylight harvesting, occupancy sensing, and individual controls for the lighting system being installed.

The Office of the Future (OTF) program is a new energy efficiency approach supported by a consortium of some of the nation’s largest and most progressive energy utilities. OTF targets existing multi‐tenant commercial office buildings with packages of advanced energy efficiency and demand response strategies. These strategies can be applied at the tenant level for building owners. This sector has been problematic for utility incentive programs to capture. This pilot project has three primary goals: 1) Examine the performance characteristics of highly controlled lighting systems in a real-office environment compared to existing lighting and applicable codes, 2) Monitor plug-load energy use, and 3) Provide measured and technical data back to the OTF consortium to inform them of the process. This project consists of one half of the 12th floor of the Los Angeles Federal Building (8,024 square feet (ft2 )d) occupied by a division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This building was previously delamped, retrofitted with T8 lamps and electronic ballasts, and fitted with a relay-based lighting control system. The east half of the floor was relighted using state-of-the-art technology, while the west half was left in its original condition. Energy use metering before and after the relighting project allows for direct comparison of potential savings in a real workspace. Additionally, the new lighting system is capable of demand reduction, tuning and other energy savings strategies. The project was highly representative of the challenges and complications faced in retrofit projects in everyday office buildings. In this case, the design was limited by two problems common to older office buildings: encapsulated asbestos fireproofing and lack of seismic upgrading. To resolve these issues, the general lighting system was attached to the furniture, and over 12,000 pounds (lbs.) of old light fixtures were removed from the ceiling to lessen seismic loads. A new ceiling using 90% reflective ceiling tiles was installed to increase lighting system efficiency. Finally, the connection to the emergency lighting system was simplified and improved.