Pasadena, CA
Retrofit of 20 Buildings on the Laboratory’s Campus With Expected Savings of Over 3 Million kWh of Electricity and 9,000 MBTU of Natural Gas Annually

A Closer Look //
Engineering NASA to be More Energy Efficient

In 2011, our energy company was awarded a $10.8 million contract from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC). This comprehensive project involved a wide array of energy conservation measures to drive deeper savings and improve overall building performance for 20 occupied, operationally dependent mission-critical facilities. Because all work was performed in occupied facilities, our team scheduled much of its implementation after hours and on weekends and holidays to minimize disruptions to occupants and NASA’s various mission-critical projects. We worked closely with building owners, laboratory managers, facilities staff, IT support, CalTech administration, and NASA administration to complete upgrades in mission critical data centers, clean rooms, and laboratories. This project is now saving NASA over 3 million kWh of electricity and 9,000 MMBtu of natural gas annually, resulting in utility savings of more than $425,000 per year.

After the completion of CEG’s first ESPC project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2012, NASA awarded CEG a $25.7MM contract for a second ESPC project at the laboratory. The project’s scope includes renewable energy, water conservation, and energy efficiency measures and involved upgrades to 128 buildings. Although NASA had previously performed a wide range of upgrades to its energy-consuming systems on campus, the measures that have been installed as part of CEG’s Phase II project are expected to reduce water consumption by 18 million gallons per year (24%), electricity consumption by 5.6 million kWh per year (5.6%), and total energy consumption by 23.9 Billion Btu per year (5.1%). The project was recently expanded to include the installation of a 273 kW rooftop solar PV system.