The New York Design Center (NYDC)is a luxury furniture showroom building located inManhattan's Midtown East area. World Class furniture  designers make up the tenant roster for this building  where they can collaborate and provide a centralized  market for designers, architects and purveyors of luxury  and functional home furnishings. The NYDC has been  actively leading the energy efficiency improvement and  sustainability of its building since the movement began  and serves as a role model for other commercial  landlords. 

In 2013/2014 NYDC's building-wide LEDconversion initiative included tenant spaces as well as  common areas and has netted a permanent  demand   reduction of 300 kW annually.  From a facility  services  standpoint, this required removal of ducted central airconditioning systems and replaced with ductless split air  conditioning units manufactured by Daikin. The result was over 128 mutually exclusive airconditioning systems that provided excellent temperature   and  humidity control however from a whole building point  of view, the equipment operated sporadically which  contributed to a volatile kW demand profile and low loadfactor. These conditions further resulted in less than  favorable supply prices and undue stress on building  electrical systems. NYDC engaged LC Associates and PEPCO to  evaluate potential alternatives to the existing condition  and after modeling several options it was concluded that  the most cost effective means and methods available  was to deploy a building wide energy management   system and take advantage of the ConEdison/NYSERDA  Demand Management Program which offered incentives  to lower and "manage" kW demand of buildings.  LC Associates led a team of ConEdison Market Partners  i.e. the "Green Team", who collaborated on the design of  a building automation system that would permanently  reduce kW demand and also provide automated demand  response for NYISO curtailment opportunities.  A recursive building automation protocol that constantly  monitors current conditions and feeds that information  back into itself for fine tuning with amazing results. The  protocol was designed to pre-cool the building during  exceptionally hot days, limit the operation of coincident  air conditioning systems to 80% while safeguarding  space temperatures and implementing a demand  response protocol. 

Project Highlights Include: 

• Installation of a DELTA BMS Control System  
• Install controls on 95 packaged AHU’s 
• Connect 33 Daikin A/C to BMS via BACnet.  
• File for CON ED and NYSERDA Rebates  
• Removal of Electric Boilers 
• Install new Lobby and Hallway A/C Units 
• 841,000 kW h Annually Saved 
• 639 Tons of Carbon Reduction 
• 1,000 kW Curtailed 

The system was fully functional in May of 2015 and after  a couple of months of fine-tuning the BMS system limited  coincident air conditioner operation to 60% while  maintaining space temperatures!The unique makeup of the building made it easy to cool  at a moment's notice. The BMS system was designed to  sub-cool the spaces prior to a curtailment event and  what we found was that the BMS was able to curtail over  1,000 kW for a full 4 hours using the curtailment  algorithm as a result of this measure. 

The carbon offset for this project is based upon saving 841,000 kWh annually resulting in 639 Tons of Carbon Dioxide removed from the atmosphere each year which roughly equates to the following metrics:

• 122 Passenger Vehicles driven for 1 year
• 52.9  homes’ energy use for 1 year
• 65,254 Gallons of gasoline consumed
• 14,870 Tree seedlings grown for 10 years