How the U.S. Navy Plans to Save $6 Million Per Year at One Air Station

We've talked with many of the branches of the US military on their push into efficiency and renewables.  Nice to see real data coming back on some of their facilities.

What this article truly points out, though, is the amazing reduction in energy any of us can achieve, and the phenomenal ROI on doing so. What better resources to preserve than on fuel and water.

RMI, too, has been on the radio side with us and deserves kudos for their excellent work and reports.  What an inspiration to all organizations to get smart around operations.

How the U.S. Navy Plans to Save $6 Million Per Year at One Air Station

Breakthrough energy savings performance contract (ESPC) projects exemplify how an ESPC can unlock deep levels of energy savings. ESPC projects are financed through energy and water cost savings, allowing clients to reduce their overall energy and water consumption, and save money with no upfront capital costs. Because of this, ESPCs are particularly appealing to federal, state, and local government bodies, which typically lack appropriated funding; have aggressive energy, water, and carbon reduction goals; and seek to save taxpayer money.

RMI studied a number of government ESPC projects and interviewed project team members, uncovering a number of best practices that should be widely used to encourage stronger projects that achieve deeper levels of savings while benefiting both the client and the contractor. These best practices include:

• Setting aggressive long term goals
• Engaging and collaborating with diverse stakeholders
• Establishing a support system
• Starting with a clean sheet and a beginner’s mind
• Using an iterative, holistic design process
• Incorporating feedback and ongoing involvement

RMI and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), a leader in federal energy efficiency, have teamed up to publicize these success stories. The case study featured below is part of the joint RMI-GSA report Deep Energy Retrofits Using Energy Savings Performance Contracts: Success Stories (available at RMI’s "GSA Retrofits" web page) and RMI’s greater initiative to engage federal partners to enable deeper energy savings on their building retrofit projects. These efforts have become increasingly relevant in the wake of Executive Order 13693 and the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015, two recent federal directives that emphasize energy efficiency’s crucial role in a sustainable U.S. energy landscape.

The NAS Oceana Success Story

The Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana deep energy retrofit is a four-phase endeavor that is unprecedented in both size and scope. The project—which kicked off in 2002 and is expected to be completed in 2017—is projected to reduce energy use by over 40 percent across more than 100 retrofitted buildings, saving the naval base over $6 million in annual energy costs.
Key Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs):

• Steam and chiller-plant decentralization
• High-efficiency HVAC equipment
• Renewables: solar thermal, ground-source heat pump (GSHP) with effluent heat rejection
• Digital controls: over 18,000 measurement points
• Lighting retrofits: over 40,000 fixtures
• Water conservation: over 10,000 fixtures

Awards and Accolades:
Phase 2 of the project earned the 2011 VSBN Green Innovation Award and the 2009 Presidential Award for Leadership in Federal Energy Management, and helped the Navy earn the 2009 Platts Green Energy Initiative of the Year award.

Project Details: Phases 1–4


The project is centered on the decommissioning and decentralization of the base’s out-of-date and inefficient steam plant, which had deteriorated beyond repair from corrosion (due to the plant’s location in a coastal environment). This presented Navy and Trane personnel with an opportunity to leverage a major infrastructure investment as an enabler for deep energy savings. Load reduction measures such as lighting retrofits and the addition of high-efficiency HVAC equipment, together with system rightsizing, allowed the project team to downsize system components by up to 70 percent. Additional measures, including an extensive GSHP system that used graywater effluent from a nearby water treatment plant for heat rejection—one of the first systems of its kind—transformed the base’s energy source from an outdated liability to a state-of-the-art example of efficiency.

Multiple Phases and a Long-Term Outlook

Staging work across multiple phases allowed the Navy and Trane to capture easy, up-front savings while maintaining a long-term vision. Lessons learned during early phases were instrumental in shaping later work. The steam plant decommissioning implemented at the Dam Neck Annex in Phase 2, for example, was so successful that the measure was implemented at the main base as the cornerstone of Phase 3 work. Phase 2’s successful lighting and water ECMs were also replicated and key systems were purposely over-sized with future expansion in mind.

In addition, the project team’s long-term vision for the naval base was exemplified in operations and maintenance (O&M) procedures. The Navy decided from the project outset that O&M work would be contracted to Trane, allowing for Trane’s O&M team to contribute to project development, thus avoiding a number of maintenance issues. The Navy also elected to consider O&M savings as a value stream, a significant decision considering corrosion issues at this coastal site. Some existing outdoor systems required replacement or retrofit every three to four years, a maintenance headache that the project team was able to address by installing all new equipment and piping indoors or underground.

Making Opportunistic Adjustments

During a routine site-walk late in Phase 2 of the project, a Trane engineer noticed a six-foot pipe running through the base. The pipe, which had not been previously considered, was an effluent pipeline stemming from the nearby Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) disposing 50 million gallons of graywater per day.

Project team members moved quickly to capitalize on the discovery. Navy and Trane quickly established a partnership with HRSD personnel, who allowed free use of their pipeline in exchange for a land easement to be used for future treatment plant expansion. The already-specified 450-ton ground-source heat pump and 4,400-ton condenser-cooling loop were redesigned to incorporate a heat-rejection loop utilizing the effluent pipeline. This allowed the project team to remove several cooling towers and other HVAC components from the original project scope. Using the massive effluent pipeline—where the internal temperature rises less than 1° F during use—was also significantly more efficient than traditional GSHP heat-rejection well fields (which generally reach 90–95° F) at a lower installation cost. This also significantly reduced the site’s potable water use and steam-plant emissions.

Exemplary Teamwork

Project personnel credited their long-term vision and collaborative approach to trust between the Navy’s deputy public works officer and a Trane federal executive. This trust was exemplified when the naval officer fought on behalf of Trane to recognize project savings that were taken off the table near the end of the project. Conversely, when Trane completed Phase 3 of the project over four months ahead of schedule (due in part to the excellent communication structure between Trane and the Navy), they elected to funnel $1.2 million in savings back into the site, retrofitting ancillary systems that had originally been left out of the project scope.