BUILDING 4 LAKEVIEW SQUARE - NABERS UPGRADE

In March 2007, we began the process of upgrading the energy efficiency of Building 4 of Lakeview Square by having an Australian Building Greenhouse Rating (ABGR) conducted.

ABGR was superceeded by National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS). The ABGR for the building was assessed initially at 2 stars. It was noted that there was significant scope for cost effective improvements, and that small changes would have a notable impact on the building’s energy and operating costs. In order to upgrade the energy efficiency of our building, we determined the following issues to be most important:

• Building Management Control System (BMCS) to optimise running costs and includes monitoring and reporting functions;
• Adequate optimised air-condition zoning;
• High efficiency chiller;
• High efficiency on energy and water consumption cooling tower;
• Variable speed drives on all motors;
• Rebalancing of entire system with swirl diffusers (Better air distribution and comfort levels);
• High efficiency and controlled lighting, reducing heat loads and wasted usage;
• Upgrade of building insulation fabric.

The NABERS assessment for the building covered the period from 16/7/2009 to 15/7/2010. The base building NABERS rating was assessed at 3.5 stars. NABERS rates buildings on a scale from 1 to 5 stars. Ratings benchmark a building against the current market performance, with 2.5 stars representing market average performance. 3.5 stars represent a good to very good rating, however there is still room for improvement.The installation of the BMS has highlighted a few issues which we will need to address in the ongoing maintenance and sustainability of the building. Recommendations to further improve the energy efficiency of the building include things such as:

• Ensuring the air conditioning is only operating during business hours and not on public holidays;
• The period between plant start up and the start of occupancy was excessive (up to 3.5 hours). The warm up time to be reduced to around 1 hour;
• After hours reports lacking from·remote access of the·BMS. Plant was running till 9:00pm and could not be explained through remote access to the BMS.