Sain Engineering Associates, Inc.

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Various Energy Efficiency Projects

Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL

Specifically for Marshall Space Flight Center, SEA has performed 12 energy management projects since November of 2003. These 12 projects have covered 10 MSFC facilities with an aggregate floor area of approximately 840,000 gsf. Primarily, the services performed for these 10 facilities have been various customized energy and water conservation audits and detailed feasibility studies.  Some of these projects have included retro-commissioning analysis. As a result of these projects, 61 retrofit projects have been recommended for MSFC implementation. The aggregate cost of these retrofit projects is estimated to be approximately $1,446,000 with a corresponding estimated annual energy, water, and maintenance cost savings of over $530,000 which yields a simple payback of 2.7 years. One of these projects was an optimization study of MSFC’s central chilled water plant. By itself, this project showed potential energy savings of over $50,000 annually with virtually no initial investment needed. This project has served as a catalyst for MSFC to focus more on their central chilled water plant (CCWP), and SEA has just recently completed the conceptual design of a comprehensive retrofit project for MSFC’s CCWP which includes a free cooling system as well as a thermal storage system. 

SEA has performed more than energy audits and feasibility studies for MSFC. Two of the 12 projects previously mentioned have been energy training projects. One of these involved most of MSFC’s facility design staff in one day of classroom lecture followed by a second day of actual hands-on field exercise.

Essentially, SEA has functioned as an energy service company (ESCO) for MSFC, providing a wide array of customized energy services to meet/exceed MSFC’s needs. However, since MSFC is not utilizing performance contracting as a means of energy project implementation, SEA has not provided design, construction management or financing services for MSFC.

Overall, MSFC has expressed its satisfaction in SEA’s performance by hiring SEA repeatedly without SEA having an open-ended agreement with MSFC.

Project List