The City of Richmond, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, is undergoing an important redevelopment of its centrally located Civic Center Complex. This revitalization is a multi-phase project involving several buildings and parking structures and will act as a community showcase for energy and environmental leadership. As part of this effort, every attempt has been made to maximize the potential for energy efficiency and for renewable energy in the form of solar photo-voltaic (PV) panels. The existing buildings that make up the Civic Center Complex are currently individually metered for electric services from the local utility, PG&E. The key buildings involved in the first phase of work are the City Hall and the Hall of Justice which will have 2000kva combined electrical loads. Our project will include installing a 12kV system to loop several existing buildings together including these two buildings, providing two primary benefits to the City: (1) it will consolidate several buildings\' loads to a common meter at a higher voltage service, and (2) allow us to install additional PV panels. The latter is important as the Hall of Justice lacks adequate available roof space for much PV. By looping this building with other nearby buildings with the 12kV system, we can install PV on another building on the loop, the Auditorium, and permanently assign the generated power to the Hall of Justice. The Auditorium provides ample rooftop area to site enough PV panels to meet at least 7% of the proposed load for the Hall of Justice. An individual meter for the PV system will track its production of electricity. The 12kV loop also provides measurable innovative energy efficiency performance benefits by replacing the single source feeds that are now fed from the existing Hall of Justice at 208/120V with a primary based distribution system to each building. This will reduce the line losses in the Complex saving considerable energy not accounted for in other energy efficiency calculations for this project. Based on voltage drop calculations and a rough distance between the involved buildings, the energy savings will be on the order of 100 KW at full facility load. The 12kV loop is also being designed to accommodate future buildings, greatly adding to the reduction of total line losses when complete and allowing us greater flexibility for future siting of additional PV. Our question is if the 12kV loop will qualify as an innovation credit for innovative energy efficiency performance under the LEED guidelines.
Request Denied. The project team is asking if a 12kV loop will qualify as an innovation credit on account of increased energy efficiency due to reduced line losses. Adding a higher voltage loop is a standard consideration when redeveloping an existing complex for reasons listed above (i.e., common meter at a higher voltage service, often at a reduced rate, future expandability, etc.). While it is a good practice with quantifiable energy savings, it is necessitated by programmatic requirements and cannot be viewed as an innovation. LEED credit will be taken under EAc2 for the additional PV added to the auditorium roof and "permanently assigned" to the building, which will not be possible if it were not for the 12kV loop. These EAc2 points provide adequate incentive and reward for the 12kV loop addition. Applicable Internationally.