TIAA-CREF

Overview
The 578,000 square-foot TIAA-CREF headquarters at 730 Third Avenue, located between 45^th and 46^th streets, is a 30-story Class A building. TIAA-CREF had two 1,000-ton high-pressure steam absorption chillers that had reached the end of their useful life. The unexpected failure of one of the chillers left TIAA-CREF with and urgent need to find a replacement options to meet a summertime peak air conditioning load of 1,400 tons.

Details
Our Trane Energy Services team evaluated the existing HVAC infrastructure to develop an innovative, high performance solution to improve the financial performance of the building and to also enhance operation reliability. TIAA-CREF’S new solution features a high efficiency chilled water/central plant and a uniquely located rooftop thermal store system.

Our team replaced existing steam absorption chillers with a 1,000-ton Trane high-efficiency CenTraVac™ electric chiller, a 900-ton Dual duty CenTraVac™ electric chiller and a 30 CALMAC thermal ice storage system totalling 6,000 ton-hours of thermal storage capacity.

A steel structure was engineered by Severud Associates to support the new cooling tower and ice tanks, which weigh nearly a million pounds.

Highlights
Trane provided the chillers, ice storage system and new cooling tower as a turnkey installation to help TIAA-CREF save $765,000 in annual operating expense, resulting in a 25% internal rate of return on the investment in the high performance systems.

The project also qualified for a $219,000 rebate from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

The efficiency improvements help TIAA-CREF save 6.1 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from being released into the air. That’s the equivalent of removing 560 cars from the road or planting 828 acres of trees.