Upgrades to Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building Show Possibilities of Energy Efficiency and Resilience

How can a large seventy-five-year old public building continue to serve the community while becoming an example of modern energy efficiency and resilience?

The Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building was built in 1948 and is used regularly by military veterans, community groups and serves as an evacuation hub and shelter during emergencies.  The decision to upgrade the building is designed to save money on energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and serve as a public cooling center during extreme heat events.

These upgrades also illustrate the technology and incentives available for property owners who wish to improve the efficiency and resilience of their own homes and businesses.  The project aligns with the County Strategic Plan goals to make County facilities carbon neutral, as well as increasing resiliency of these facilities to ensure continuity of operations during an emergency or disaster.

PG&E’s Sustainable Solutions Turnkey (SST) program offers the services required to design, finance and install upgrades and is an ideal match for the project. The SST program also offers an initial energy use assessment to determine the upgrades needed. Numerous California projects have been completed using the program, including City and County buildings, hospitals, military facilities, and schools.

The County of Sonoma also leveraged BayREN’s Municipal Zero Net Carbon/Zero Net Energy (ZNE/ZNC) Technical Assistance program. The program provides free engineering technical assistance to help local governments save energy and money while reducing their carbon footprints by moving towards ZNE/ZNC with their buildings. Program services for the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial included a Zero Net Energy (ZNE) feasibility study, identifying measures to improve energy efficiency at the existing facility, and assessing the impact of adding space cooling systems to the existing building. Findings from the feasibility study were utilized to guide planned upgrades for the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial.

Planned upgrades to the Veterans Memorial Building:

• A 110.7 kW solar photovoltaic canopy in the parking lot, with the capacity to add Level 2 chargers in the future.  The canopy will cover about 28 parking spaces north of the building.
• A 80 kW battery energy storage system will allow the facility to operate as a fully powered island during electricity outages. The system will also save money, enabling facility managers to charge the battery when electricity rates are lowest and use the stored energy from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. when energy is more expensive.
• Replacement of the auditorium’s existing natural gas-powered heating system with electric heat pumps, which will also operate as air conditioners during heat events. Currently, the building is not equipped with central air conditioning.
• New digital controls for all lighting, solar photovoltaic, battery storage and HVAC systems, which will allow for automatic and remote management to reduce waste.
• Installation of LED lights throughout the building.

The upgrades are expected to save 157,920 kWh of electricity and 1,770 therms of natural gas each year.

Approximately half of the $3.5 million project will be funded with Climate Resilience Funds awarded by the Board of Supervisors in February 2022. Other sources have been selected to provide the remaining funding, including the PG&E SST program mentioned above, using a Tax-Exempt Lease Purchase Agreement (TELP). County staff is exploring other options to cut interest costs, potentially including the use of money set aside for deferred maintenance. The financing package was approved by the County’s Debt Advisory Committee and authorized by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors in August 2023.

The project will eventually recoup costs by qualifying for $588,410 in incentives and generating more than $4.9 million in energy savings over the useful lifetime of the equipment.

The RCPA Team would be happy to provide more detailed information and recommendations to any other agencies or jurisdictions interested making their own facilities electrified, efficient and climate resilient.  We also encourage you to visit the BayREN ZNE/ZNC Technical Assistance webpage for more information on that program.