Case Study

Costco | La Quinta, California

Savings By Design Whole Building Design Analysis

Situation:

Costco Wholesale Corporation, a membership warehouse club chain, offers its residential and business customers wholesale products and services. In preparation for building a new warehouse in La Quinta, CA, Costco Wholesale was in need of implementing strict energy-efficiency measures using Title 24 standard as the baseline for approximately 140,550 square ft. of conditioned space.

Solution:

After the Utility contacted Lincus with this challengLincus accessed the utility’s New Construction Energy Efficiency program to gain incentive money for construction of Costco's energy-efficient building. The energy use for the Costco in La Quinta was modeled using Energy Pro 4 to compute savings for various energy-efficiency measures. The results from this program allow owners to make informed decisions concerning the most cost- effective building and equipment designs. Lincus then simulated multiple energy efficiency measures (EEMs) for the store, with Costco choosing to implement a combination of the following programs:

• Proposed condenser and partial subcooling
• Floating head pressure with variable setpoint control
• Case lighting control
• Efficient display case fan motors
• Efficient walk-in box fan motors
• High-efficiency HVAC packaged units
• Skylights, lighting control and proposed lighting power density

The total annual cost reduction for the above combination of EEMs is approximately $87,951 with a 2.6 year simple payback. Adoption of all the EEM combinations as shown above resulted in a calculated incentive amount of $72,483.