DEARBORN – Millenium Energy Company announced that its HVAC Infrastructure & Energy Initiative has been recognized for new energy efficiency technologies that support a national effort to create sustainability in older buildings.
This multi-year project aimed to turn Dearborn’s 80-acre building complex across from the Ford World Headquarters into a world-class, energy-efficient, sustainable municipal campus.
It was named Project of the Year by the Association for Energy Engineers (AEE) Region III and the American Public Works Association (APWA) Michigan Chapter. It was also nominated for APWA’s National Project of the Year.
Millenium Energy Company worked with Larkin Engineering to design an innovative, comprehensive solution to upgrade heating and cooling infrastructure that would maximize energy efficiency and minimize future energy and maintenance costs. At the heart of this solution is Millenium’s patented E~flow control system, which uses a patented control algorithm to satisfy a building’s real-time heating and cooling demand to deliver the right amount of hydronic energy at the right time to each of the buildings and heating/cooling systems on the campus.
The project included upgrading HVAC, thermal, and electric infrastructure, and other energy-consuming systems to the most current technology in six key buildings: Dearborn Administrative Building (DAC), Henry Ford Centennial Library, Police Building and Jail, Dearborn 19th District Court Building, Ford Community and Performing Arts Center, and the Central Cooling and Electrical Distribution Plant (Powerhouse). Larkin Engineering completed all MEP design work for complete HVAC, boiler, and chiller systems installations. CSM Mechanical and CSM Energy Solutions performed most of the mechanical installation work, building automation integration, and E~flow programming.
Project highlights:
- Integrated the patented E~flow variable heating and cooling pumping volume control system into the new Tridium building automation system. E~flow manages the variable flow of the 22,000-gallon chilled water tunnel distribution system from the central plant. It delivers the chilled water to each of the buildings on the main loop, totaling almost 0.5 million square feet, based on thermal energy demand. E~flow also stages and optimizes the operation of the two 600-ton chillers to minimize electric demand. E~flow also controls the variable hot water flow in each building based on heating demand.
- Reduced energy use by installing new state-of-the-art and energy-efficient equipment such as direct-drive fans, variable speed pumps, variable capacity chillers, LED lighting and controls, etc.
- Installed a new state-of-the-art distributed building automation system (dBAS) utilizing on-board chiller, boiler, VFD, and HVAC unit controls for comfort control and energy management, and to minimize costs.
- Applied energy-efficient operations strategies for real-time optimized high-efficiency centralized cooling, distributed heating, and building ventilation determined by building occupancy to control thermal and electric demand.
- The entire system is designed to utilize an Energy Dashboard for all campus buildings with real-time, online metering to track energy usage and costs.
