Creekside High School – the Tigard-Tualatin School District’s center for students requiring a non-traditional path toward completing their education – has long resided in an aging schoolhouse wedged just off the driveway leading into the district.

But the district is changing that. With the completion of Creekside’s newest addition, the facility has achieved Net Zero Energy – generating enough power on-site to offset the needs of the building.

Designing for Net Zero Energy is often misunderstood as a costly process requiring complex systems design. However, cost can be mitigated by reducing small amounts of energy from each system, until the need is manageable by an on-site supply. The design team worked together early in the project to optimize the geometry of the building for passive design elements such has abundant natural daylighting and natural ventilation, and to allow the PV panels to directly attach to a southern facing standing seam metal roof – packing the panels close together and maximizing the capacity of the available roof area. This resulted in a 30% reduction in first costs for the PV array by eliminating the racking systems entirely and simplifying the structure supporting the array.

The PV system plays a large role in the facility reaching its Net Zero Energy goal (the array is expected to produce as much as 148,000 kilowatt hours per year, easily exceeding the amount needed to power the school). But with every corner of the school’s MEP and lighting system optimized to reduce and reuse its own energy, the size of the array is reduced to fit on the rooftop and not exceed initial budgets.

There’s an old adage in energy departments that says, “Buildings don’t use energy. People do.” Net Zero Energy isn’t achieved by the building alone – it requires an end-user to participate. In a K-12 setting like Creekside, this creates as a learning opportunity for students. A digital dashboard prominently displayed in the common area offers real-time insights into the school’s energy usage and demonstrates to students how the systems function and how their actions directly improve the building’s performance. The goal is to reframe how students view their building, and socialize energy usage.

While the ROI on a Net Zero Energy project should be a priority, the keystone goal of the design was to refresh the possibilities of what lies ahead for the students. And facilitating that kind of community stewardship is what leads these projects to meeting the triple bottom line of People/Planet/Profit.

Awards

• ILFI Net Zero Certification
• 2020 ASHRAE Regional Tech Award: New Education Category

Size: 18,000 square feet
Project Cost: $6,017,353
End Date: March 2019
Architect: Bora Architects
Contractor: TS Gray Construction
Services: Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, Technology Integration, Energy Analysis, Lighting Design

Image courtesy of Portland Drone