King County Parks North Utility Maintenance Facility

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  North utility break room

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One of King County's top priorities is to safeguard and enhance natural resources and the environment by minimizing our operational environmental footprint. To make this vision a reality, King County's Parks Division completed an energy efficiency retrofit project in 2017, enhanced by the installation of a 49-kilowatt photovoltaic system on its North Utility Maintenance crew headquarters at Marymoor Park in Redmond. This work was possible through the collaborative efforts of the Park Division's Operations staff, King County's Energy Manager, Capital project Manager and management.

King County's Energy Manager saw an opportunity to improve the efficiency of the shop complex's two buildings, which were built in the early 2000s and not designed for zero energy but had good solar orientation. However, the Parks Division is a property tax levy-funded agency directly accountable to King County taxpayers. On-site maintenance staff were relatively unfamiliar with green building concepts, so some education and groundwork were necessary to build momentum and understanding of the project. As a retrofit project, the energy improvements had to be carefully evaluated to reduce energy use enough to be offset by the solar power that could be generated on the available roof space.

Implementing the energy upgrades in increments made the building performance improvements more noticeable and rewarding – [we saw] the improved efficiency with each new upgrade

Ultimately, the project integrated a cost-effective package of solar panels and cutting-edge energy efficient lighting and mechanical equipment to see zero energy results. The building's lights were upgraded to extremely high efficiency LEDs, and a premium- efficiency heat pump system replaced the heaters and air conditioners in the buildings.

We were able to improve the building conditions and [in the process], comfort for the people who work there. Focusing on reducing energy use as much as possible before installing the solar system enabled us to provide higher quality lighting and better building comfort, while significantly reducing energy use.

In the last year, the solar panels on the building provided 25% more energy than the building consumed. The project has submitted its Zero Energy certification and will be the first in King County to be certified.