The first building on Yale’s Campus to be 100% dedicated to electrified heating and cooling equipment.
Yale University, founded in 1701, is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
A new academic building consisting of five floors was designed for the Department of Economics at the current site of 87 Trumbull Street. The new building connects to the lower and first floors of the adjacent 89 Trumbull Street, and to the lower, first, second, and third floors of 28 Hillhouse Avenue. Connections to 30 Hillhouse Avenue are at the first, second and third floors. The building provides faculty offices, classrooms, multiple common social areas, meeting rooms of varying sizes, faculty lounge, graduate student offices, department staff offices, and support spaces. Renovations to the existing buildings were necessary at the various connection points to the new building, limited to changes required by code (sprinkler and fire alarm).
The first all-electric building on campus, the Center is the first of many initiatives to help the University achieve its Zero Carbon Ready goals in the future. Due to the position of the building, existing campus systems were not able to be used and extending the systems was not cost effective, therefore the decision was made to make the building fully electrified. The building is heated and cooled via a water-cooled variable refrigerant (VRF) system. The campus chilled water return loop is being utilized as the heat sink for the VRF system. This configuration drastically improves the efficiency performance of the HVAC system compared to an air-cooled system and allows the building to meet the low Energy Usage Index (EUI) set forth by the University for this project.
