Spanning 5 blocks in the heart of San Francisco, the 3.6 million square foot Embarcadero Center provides office space for over 14,000 people and is recognized as San Francisco’s premier destination for boutique shopping, restaurants, and popular events. Built in phases throughout the 1970s, these iconic buildings had an obsolete, hard to use, first generation Digital Control System that was causing excessive energy consumption and tenant satisfaction issues.
As part of their national sustainability effort, Embarcadero Center’s owner, Boston Properties, undertook a four-year project to retrofit the Building Automation System to reduce energy consumption and improve operations. Syserco was chosen for its proven track record of executing large-scale retrofits in occupied spaces, its commitment to customer service, and its ability to deliver significant energy savings through enhanced programming.
The four buildings at Embarcadero Center each had unique mechanical systems that were very different from one to the next. To improve control of these disparate systems, Syserco provided an individualized design and construction approach for each building. To ensure success, Syserco’s Energy Team collaborated with Boston Properties and PG&E to research and implement enhanced energy management routines and measures.
These measures include building-wide supply air, chilled water, heating water setpoint resets, advanced optimum start routines, lighting controls, and the conversion of Chiller Plants to Variable Flow. In addition to energy and operational savings, Embarcadero Center tenants are now provided additional control over their environments. Through access to the building systems via a web portal integrated into the Boston Properties Tenant Portal System, tenants can make changes to the temperatures in their spaces based on their needs.
Over the course of this four-year project, and through the installation of the Alerton EMCS, Syserco provided Boston Properties with a means to save 3.3 million kWh and 261,000 therms per year while achieving LEED Gold EB Certification.
