Glendale Community College

On November 8, 2016, City of Glendale voters approved the $325 million Measure GC Bond. The funds allocated under this measure enabled the District to continue upgrading its educational facilities, adding classrooms and instructional support space at the Verdugo Campus, the Garfield Campus, and the Montrose Campus. A fraction of this bond measure was allocated to the continuous improvement of campus energy conservation. The BR Energy Division team was contracted to build out and direct a multi-phase, sequenced energy master plan. 

An investment-grade audit was completed, and energy models were created for each building on campus. The chilled water distribution systems were also modeled and used to aggregate the building loads, simulating the heating and cooling energy requirements for each. From the audit and accompanying analysis a portfolio of projects was developed, starting with immediate needs: equipment repair and replacement, building controls upgrades, and the remaining LED conversion projects. 

Future efficiency and optimization projects were developed using a longer-term and broader focus. As one example, the main central plant chillers and ancillary equipment were replaced with higher capacity and higher efficiency equipment, followed by aggregating the campus’s two disparate central plant loops and resequencing the updated central plant to perform as the lead equipment for most of the district’s cooling requirements.

Self-generation through both solar PV and fuel cells was analyzed and budgeted for, and lastly, load shifting measures such as thermal energy storage were also analyzed and included in the energy master plan.

Projects were implemented using a competitive RFP selection process using RFPs and design documents developed by BR’s team.

• Completed Projects: 37.
• Realized Annual Savings: $527k.
• Future Projects: 21.
• Future Annual Savings: $1.1m.
• Total Value of Energy Master Plan Projects: $26.5m.