Located in the Design District of San Francisco, 650 Townsend was originally constructed in 1990 as a 6-story indoor shopping mall. In 2011, the facility was converted to a Class A office building when Zynga, social gaming giant, bought the building to serve as their world headquarters. Today, the building houses a large data center and serves as office space for approximately 20 tenants, including Zynga, with each tenant requiring unique working hours and customized HVAC demand profiles.
In 2012, Zynga selected Syserco as their partner to assist in designing and implementing a strategy to address issues caused by the existing mechanical systems. These systems were controlled by an unwieldy combination of pneumatics and multiple legacy DDC systems, resulting in frequent temperature complaints from tenants, maintenance issues, simultaneous heating / cooling, and unnecessarily high energy bills.
After an initial Energy Management and Control System upgrade of the worst offending areas of the building, Syserco worked closely with the property manager, Cushman & Wakefield, to develop and execute a multi-year program of corrective actions, operational and maintenance improvements, and energy conservation measures. Syserco replaced antiquated systems, automated the air handlers, added free air-side cooling, optimized the central plant operation, and replaced obsolete chilled water valves with intelligent “Energy Valves” that reduce pump horsepower and increase chiller efficiency.
The HVAC system contains four large centralized air handlers working in concert to satisfy the environmental demands of each area in the building. The central chilled water plant feeding these air handlers operates 24 hours per day, 7 days per week to meet the continuous cooling needs of the building.
All phases of Syserco’s facility improvement plan were implemented while the building was occupied with minimum disruption to operations or tenants. The project has yielded impactful results of over $300,000 per year in utility cost avoidance.
