The iconic, pyramid-shaped office building at 550 Biltmore Way has presided over the Coral Gables skyline since 1986. And, at the top of the pyramid, two hulking, 180-ton air conditioning units have been cooling the air inside since the building first opened four decades ago.
Aging machines like these, which operate less efficiently than newer models, can add thousands of dollars to a building’s annual utility bill — especially in a year that is on pace to break South Florida heat records. They also use more energy, raising carbon emissions and contributing to climate change. “The chillers have been working very hard this summer,” said Isel Morfa, the building engineer.
To figure out just how hard the chillers been running, and just how much the building owners could save by upgrading them, University of Miami industrial engineer Ibrahim Ahmed rode the art deco building’s burled walnut paneled elevator to the top penthouse floor, stepped out onto a rooftop terrace with a view overlooking the Biltmore Hotel, and climbed up a ladder to reach the electrical panels that sit next to the noisy hum of the A/C units.
There, he donned a welder’s mask and an electricity resistant arc suit — a getup he says makes him feel a little like Ironman — and opened up the panels to clamp electrical sensors onto the thick cables that deliver power to the chillers. The sensors will collect data for the next few weeks and inform a report that Ahmed and his colleagues at the University of Miami Industrial Assessment Center will deliver to the building’s owners outlining steps they can take to use less power.
“Depending on how much they’re willing to implement, they could save between 5 and 20 percent” of their energy bill, said Ramin Moghaddass, an associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at UM and the director of the Industrial Assessment Center.
The building inspection at 550 Biltmore Way is part of Miami-Dade County’s Building Efficiency 305 program, which started last year to help building managers save money and shrink their carbon footprint.
Building owners and managers can enroll in the program and attend free training sessions on boosting their buildings’ energy and water efficiency. Eight times a year, the county picks one participating building for a free efficiency audit from the UM Industrial Assessment Center, which offers them tailored advice on cutting their power bill.
For Alicia Rivero, the project management director at CGI Merchant Group, the company that owns the building, the decision to enroll was simple: “We wanted to save money,” she said.
But for the county, there’s a broader goal. Buildings account for 37% of Miami-Dade County’s greenhouse gas emissions. A big chunk of that comes from 12,000 large buildings measuring 20,000 square feet or more, according to Marta Marello, who runs the Building Efficiency 305 program.
“The purpose of this program is to improve energy and water efficiency in large existing buildings because we know that’s where we can have the biggest impact” on greenhouse emissions and water usage, Marello said.
Energy efficiency detectives
At 550 Biltmore Way, the building managers are already taking steps to improve their efficiency, including gradually replacing old fluorescent light bulbs with LED lights and making plans to replace their 37-year-old chillers over the winter, when it will be less disruptive to shut off the air conditioning.
But Moghaddass, Ahmed and a team of seven UM industrial and systems engineering students carrying clipboards, iPads and high-tech sensors approached their task like detectives, scouring the scene for any inefficiency that could be fixed to make the building use even less power or water than it already does. “They’re making our job more challenging,” Ahmed said with a smile.
First, they peppered Morfas, the building engineer, with questions about thermostat settings, the hours when the buildings’ doctors, lawyers, accountants and other office workers usually work and the specs of various pieces of building equipment. “You’d make a great lawyer someday,” Morfas told Jessica Mendez, an undergraduate industrial and systems engineering student, as she pressed him for more details.
Then the team toured the building, examining the rooftop chillers, cooling towers, air compressor and air handlers — all the giant machinery required to keep any big building in South Florida habitable year-round. The UM team was impressed with a novel system the 550 Biltmore Way engineers had devised for collecting the cold condensation that drips constantly off the air handler and reusing it in the cooling towers.
Finally, the students fanned out with clipboards and gear to count how many non-LED light bulbs remain in the building, place temperature sensors to gauge how effectively the cooling system is working and measure how much cool air is leaking out of a slight gap between the building’s front doors.
After about five hours, the team returned to the lab to start organizing their findings into a report that they plan to deliver within about a month to the building owners. They’ll return one more time before then to pick up the sensors they left behind and analyze the data they’ve collected.
Paving the way for new efficiency standards
Earlier this year, the City of Miami implemented a new set of efficiency standards for large buildings. The rules require the owners of buildings larger than 20,000 square feet to track how much energy they use and report their data to the city each year. The requirements kick in gradually, starting with buildings 200,000 square feet and bigger, which had their first reporting deadline on June 30.
The county is also working on devising similar reporting rules for large buildings, according to Marello, although she said there’s no clear timeline for when those rules might be implemented. In the meantime, she said, the Building Efficiency 305 program is designed to start getting building managers to voluntarily step up their efficiency and report data to the county.
Although only a handful of buildings will get an in-depth audit like 550 Biltmore Way, these reports, which are published on a county website, can serve as a model for other buildings that might face similar challenges.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava picked the first building to receive an efficiency audit at random out of a jumble of names mixed up in Chief Resilience Officer Jim Murley’s signature Panama hat. But since then, Marello said the county has purposefully chosen a diverse set of buildings to audit so that there would be a wide range of case studies for local building managers to learn from.
They’ve audited apartment buildings, office buildings, government buildings, car dealerships, hotels, the Vizcaya mansion, the Frost Science Museum and soon they plan to add a warehouse. “The idea is that we want to be as representative as possible,” said Marello, “so that other building owners and managers can say, ‘Let me look at these case studies and see if maybe there are ideas I can copy.’”
Training a green workforce
In addition to teaching South Florida building managers how to use less water and electricity, the building audits also train a new generation of University of Miami students to spot and fix wasteful inefficiencies.
“All these students after this will be part of the clean energy workforce,” said Moghaddass. “Two of our students now work in the Miami-Dade County Office of Resilience. Many of them stay in Florida in the energy industry.”
