is a special, award-winning building with a special mission. It provides classrooms for Bay educational programs, as well as meeting space. However, the building itself represents Save The Bay’s approach to promoting environmentally smart shoreline development.

The Save The Bay Center, formally opened on June 2, 2005, is a state of the art education center, built on a former brownfields site. The grounds include demonstrations of stormwater management, coastal buffer planting and salt marsh restoration.

The Bay Center cost approximately $7 million — a figure that includes the cost of preparing the land ($2 million) and building the Center itself ($5 million). It is important to note that many of the “green” aspects of our building save both energy and costs.

The building has a “green” roof. The plantings, as well as the berm along the north side of the building, reduce the amount of stormwater that runs off the roof. The parking lot is surrounded by small ponds or “swales.” This system collects runoff through a series of bio-retention trenches, capturing stormwater that would otherwise flood the parking area and mix with road salts, oil and other contaminants that would make their way to the Bay.

The architects designed the building to maximize the sun’s exposure. Because the building faces south, it benefits from the maximum passive heating from winter sunshine. And hidden on the lower roof of the building’s west wing is a 20-kilowatt photovoltaic system, one of the largest in the state, that will provide as much energy as it takes to power the building’s lights.

The Save The Bay Center serves as a demonstration site for many building and conservation techniques that are important to a healthy Narragansett Bay and watershed.

Unfortunatly, after operating for two years, it was realized that The center’s energy use was nearly four times what was originally planned by the engineers. Rather than using 50 kBtu per square foot per year, The Center was using almost 180 kBtu per square foot per year. Beyond the energy waste, the systems were not even keeping a comfortable, or consistant, climate for the buildings occupants. This shows that, even with the best technology available, and high quality systems, energy savings are not guarenteed. In this case, Energy Engineering and Design was called in to Retro-Commission the facility with the goal of getting the energy use back on track with the original intent of being a “Green” Building.

After Retro-Commissioning, the facility energy use was reduced by over 70% to near 40 kBtu/sf/year, and the occupants of the building were much more comfortable.

Retro-Commissioning Findings:

As is typical of many buildings, things were simply not installed and running exactly as designed. While the system appeared to be running properly, there were many small deviation from the original design intent that added up to a large increase in energy use. In this case the problems included:

• The building control system was not programmed to operate as designed
• Because of small changes that had to be made during cunstruction, the actual building operation was different than anticipated by the architect and engineer
• HVAC equipment was not commissioned during construction resulting in some operational problems
• Some things were “value engineered” out of the design, after retro-commissioning, these items were retrofitted back into the building
• Poor operator training of the control and HVAC systems resulted in poor operation and the inability to make necessary changes to known problems
• Lack of understanding by the occupants and staff of all of the “Green” features of the building and how to most efficiently use these features