1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,320 Hi everyone and welcome to GreenMonk TV. 2 00:00:07,320 --> 00:00:14,280 We're here at the Adobe building's West Tower and with me on the show today, I have Randy 3 00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:15,280 Knox. 4 00:00:15,280 --> 00:00:19,920 I'm the Senior Director of Global Workplace Solutions for Adobe and in that role I oversee 5 00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:22,800 our facilities, real estate and physical security. 6 00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:26,240 Okay, and Randy, this building is LEED certified? 7 00:00:26,240 --> 00:00:27,240 That's correct. 8 00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:30,840 It's one of four that we have that's LEED EB Platinum certified now. 9 00:00:30,840 --> 00:00:31,840 Superb. 10 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:37,120 And we're standing in front, we're standing in your patio area with some lovely grass and 11 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:38,120 some nice plants around. 12 00:00:38,120 --> 00:00:39,640 What are the significance of these? 13 00:00:39,640 --> 00:00:44,160 Well, what we'd like to show folks here is what we've done to reduce our outdoor water 14 00:00:44,160 --> 00:00:47,120 use or our landscape irrigation. 15 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:49,800 We've put in drought tolerant plantings. 16 00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:54,640 All the plantings are native California and it's a drought tolerant fescue grass that we're 17 00:00:54,640 --> 00:00:55,640 using. 18 00:00:55,640 --> 00:00:59,240 We have drip irrigation under the lawn, we have drip irrigation everywhere. 19 00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:04,240 Our systems are all monitored by what we call ET controllers that stands for evapotranspirational. 20 00:01:04,240 --> 00:01:09,240 What they do is they monitor the communications between weather satellites and ground stations 21 00:01:09,240 --> 00:01:14,240 and then based on the weather that's coming in, it determines how much watering, if any, is 22 00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:15,240 required that day. 23 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:18,840 And by the use of the technology and the drought tolerant planting and the drip irrigation, 24 00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:23,840 we've reduced our landscape irrigation by 76%. 25 00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:24,840 76%? 26 00:01:24,840 --> 00:01:25,840 Yes. 27 00:01:25,840 --> 00:01:26,840 Wow, that's impressive. 28 00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:29,840 Randy, we're in the bathroom in the West Tower. 29 00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:30,840 Can you tell us why we're here? 30 00:01:30,840 --> 00:01:32,840 Yeah, this is quite a show place for Adobe. 31 00:01:32,840 --> 00:01:35,440 We like to bring our visitors here. 32 00:01:35,440 --> 00:01:41,440 But we refer to this as our touch-free bathroom and we believe it offers a lot healthier environment 33 00:01:41,440 --> 00:01:42,440 for our employees. 34 00:01:42,440 --> 00:01:45,440 Basically, you don't have to touch anything while you're in here. 35 00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:48,040 Everything is either motion-sensitive. 36 00:01:48,040 --> 00:01:54,040 For example, on our faucets, the water is motion as is the soap dispenser. 37 00:01:54,040 --> 00:01:57,040 And then we use our automated towel dispensers. 38 00:01:57,040 --> 00:02:03,040 We have waterless urinals and it's automatic flush valves on our toilets. 39 00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:09,040 When you say waterless urinals, is it just that they detect when someone walks away and then they spray water? 40 00:02:09,040 --> 00:02:10,040 No, no. 41 00:02:10,040 --> 00:02:12,040 They use no water. 42 00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:19,640 It's a chemical reaction that handles the waste and chemically treats it so that there's no water required to flush it. 43 00:02:19,640 --> 00:02:20,640 Wow, brilliant. 44 00:02:20,640 --> 00:02:21,640 Yes. 45 00:02:21,640 --> 00:02:22,640 Go on. 46 00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:26,640 As a consequence, we've saved over 36% on our domestic water use. 47 00:02:26,640 --> 00:02:27,640 Wow. 48 00:02:27,640 --> 00:02:29,640 So, Randy, you were just showing us the cooling outside. 49 00:02:29,640 --> 00:02:30,640 Can you talk to us a little bit about that? 50 00:02:30,640 --> 00:02:31,640 Yes. 51 00:02:31,640 --> 00:02:35,640 I'd like to show off the cooling tower and share a story. 52 00:02:35,640 --> 00:02:40,640 One of our building engineers oversaw a bill come in one day for sewer use. 53 00:02:40,640 --> 00:02:43,240 The sewer basically is billed on whatever your intake is. 54 00:02:43,240 --> 00:02:45,240 They bill that as an outtake. 55 00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:50,240 And we found out that we were losing a lot of our water through evaporation of our cooling tower. 56 00:02:50,240 --> 00:02:54,240 So, the building engineer was asked if he could measure that and quantify it, and he said sure. 57 00:02:54,240 --> 00:02:59,240 So, he put water meters on the intake and water meters on the outflow and took that variance. 58 00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:02,840 And we went to PG&E, or to the local water company. 59 00:03:02,840 --> 00:03:06,840 And they rebated us $20,000 for the previous three years. 60 00:03:06,840 --> 00:03:09,840 And they've reduced our sewer bill by $10,000 a year. 61 00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:11,840 Because you're not pushing out as much water through the sewers. 62 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:13,840 It's going up through the water towers in evaporation. 63 00:03:13,840 --> 00:03:14,840 Exactly. 64 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:15,840 Lovely. 65 00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:21,440 You also mentioned that you're staging the coolers to reduce your overall demand spikes. 66 00:03:21,440 --> 00:03:22,440 Right, exactly. 67 00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:28,440 And we figured there was a programming cost there of about $575 to do that, to change the staging. 68 00:03:28,440 --> 00:03:30,440 And we're saving about $12,000 a year. 69 00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:38,440 And that works because instead of getting cumulative spikes of all of the coolers coming on at the same time, 70 00:03:38,440 --> 00:03:41,040 they're staged to come on individually, one after the other. 71 00:03:41,040 --> 00:03:42,040 That's correct. 72 00:03:42,040 --> 00:03:45,040 And therefore, you don't get large spikes, and you're not built on the large spikes. 73 00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:47,040 You're built on the kind of flat line. 74 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:48,040 Right. 75 00:03:48,040 --> 00:03:49,040 Okay, super. 76 00:03:49,040 --> 00:03:51,040 So, Randy, what are we seeing in this room? 77 00:03:51,040 --> 00:03:55,040 We're in the boiler room, and we're looking at our boilers. 78 00:03:55,040 --> 00:04:00,040 And talking a little bit about some of the things that we've incorporated here. 79 00:04:00,040 --> 00:04:06,640 We changed the run time, modified the run times. 80 00:04:06,640 --> 00:04:09,840 Cost us about $600 to do that modification. 81 00:04:09,840 --> 00:04:12,240 We're saving about $42,000 a year. 82 00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:13,240 Wow. 83 00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:16,440 And we also installed digital controls on our boilers. 84 00:04:16,440 --> 00:04:20,040 That cost us $800 and saving us about $1,800 a year. 85 00:04:20,040 --> 00:04:22,040 So, about a six-month payback on that project. 86 00:04:22,040 --> 00:04:25,040 And these are just for boiling water and maybe some air heating? 87 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:26,040 Yes, right. 88 00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:29,240 And how are those modifications actually saving money? 89 00:04:29,240 --> 00:04:30,440 Where's the saving coming from? 90 00:04:30,440 --> 00:04:35,040 Well, I think what was happening was we weren't monitoring the tight enough before. 91 00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:39,640 And so they were running longer than they had to, so we basically changed the run time. 92 00:04:39,640 --> 00:04:42,640 And the digital controls give us the capability of doing that. 93 00:04:42,640 --> 00:04:43,640 And you can do it remotely? 94 00:04:43,640 --> 00:04:44,640 Yes. 95 00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:45,640 Excellent. 96 00:04:45,640 --> 00:04:48,240 Randy, we're standing in front of one of your printers here. 97 00:04:48,240 --> 00:04:50,640 Tell me the story about how you're reducing paper use. 98 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:54,240 Well, one of the things I like to point to is not all the ideas come out of corporate, 99 00:04:54,240 --> 00:04:56,840 which most people in a large corporation know anyway. 100 00:04:56,840 --> 00:05:00,840 But this is one of the ideas that actually came from one of our remote offices. 101 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:04,840 They'd gone to double-sided printing and wanted to know why corporate hadn't done that. 102 00:05:04,840 --> 00:05:06,840 So, we've adopted it corporate-wide now. 103 00:05:06,840 --> 00:05:10,840 And we've actually reduced our paper use here in San Jose by about 40% as a result. 104 00:05:10,840 --> 00:05:15,440 So, all the printers default to double-sided? 105 00:05:15,440 --> 00:05:16,440 Yes. 106 00:05:16,440 --> 00:05:17,440 Okay. 107 00:05:17,440 --> 00:05:19,440 You have to force single-sided printing out. 108 00:05:19,440 --> 00:05:20,440 Okay. 109 00:05:20,440 --> 00:05:21,440 Brilliant. 110 00:05:21,440 --> 00:05:25,440 Another story I like to tell, talking about, and since we're close to the break room, 111 00:05:25,440 --> 00:05:29,440 we were always having trouble getting rid of bottled water here in San Jose. 112 00:05:29,440 --> 00:05:34,840 And in our Ottawa facility, our facility manager up there, Paula Fitzgerald, implemented, 113 00:05:34,840 --> 00:05:39,040 got rid of all bottled water, and went to filtered water systems. 114 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:43,240 And she sent me a justification saying how much money she was saving monthly. 115 00:05:43,240 --> 00:05:48,540 So, I extrapolated what it would take for San Jose, which is a much larger facility. 116 00:05:48,540 --> 00:05:52,840 And I went to the CFO and said, "Would you be interested in saving $270,000 a year?" 117 00:05:52,840 --> 00:05:53,840 Guess what he said. 118 00:05:55,840 --> 00:05:59,840 We're in Adobe's building control room, and with me, I've got Ted Ludwig, who's in 119 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:00,840 charge of the systems here. 120 00:06:00,840 --> 00:06:03,840 Ted, you're going to give us a demo of some of the things on screen there? 121 00:06:03,840 --> 00:06:04,840 Certainly, I'd be happy to show you. 122 00:06:04,840 --> 00:06:05,840 Great. 123 00:06:05,840 --> 00:06:09,840 Basically, what we're looking at here is a project that we're planning here for the next 124 00:06:09,840 --> 00:06:10,840 couple of months. 125 00:06:10,840 --> 00:06:15,840 Any project, basically, remotely involved with the energy conservation, you have to have 126 00:06:15,840 --> 00:06:17,840 the before picture and an after picture. 127 00:06:17,840 --> 00:06:21,840 So, we developed this page to show us our chilled water plant upstairs on the top floor 128 00:06:21,840 --> 00:06:24,840 of this tower, and the energy savings potential that we have. 129 00:06:24,840 --> 00:06:28,840 So, to grab the information from before, we trended all the information points that we 130 00:06:28,840 --> 00:06:33,840 can possibly trend to see that we actually show some savings once the project is completed. 131 00:06:33,840 --> 00:06:37,840 So, we're going to replace the cooling towers this summer, as well as put in a new control 132 00:06:37,840 --> 00:06:40,840 strategy to make the plant fully variable flow. 133 00:06:40,840 --> 00:06:43,840 So, we're going to take all those constant volume flow pumps, basically, that are either 134 00:06:43,840 --> 00:06:46,840 on or off, and make them have cruise control. 135 00:06:46,840 --> 00:06:47,840 Superb. 136 00:06:47,840 --> 00:06:51,840 So, they can be running faster or slower, depending on what's required? 137 00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:52,840 Exactly. 138 00:06:52,840 --> 00:06:55,840 Rather than driving like your car with your foot on the gas and the brake, we run just 139 00:06:55,840 --> 00:06:56,840 at the right speed all the time. 140 00:06:56,840 --> 00:06:57,840 Lovely. 141 00:06:57,840 --> 00:06:58,840 Nice one. 142 00:06:58,840 --> 00:06:59,840 Okay. 143 00:06:59,840 --> 00:07:00,840 What else can I show you guys? 144 00:07:00,840 --> 00:07:11,840 We've developed an interesting page for data center management, a good forecasting tool for the 145 00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:16,840 folks to make sure that they are informed enough to make all these appropriate decisions. 146 00:07:16,840 --> 00:07:21,840 And we can look in an executive summary here of one of our server rooms. 147 00:07:21,840 --> 00:07:25,840 Environmental conditions, amount of cooling required to keep the space comfortable, servers 148 00:07:25,840 --> 00:07:32,840 and such, our percentage of load electrically, and a lot more information, certain statuses 149 00:07:32,840 --> 00:07:33,840 of equipment and such. 150 00:07:33,840 --> 00:07:42,840 We're able to look inside any of the spaces and see real-time electrical readings, temperatures, 151 00:07:42,840 --> 00:07:44,840 humidities, all real-time. 152 00:07:44,840 --> 00:07:49,840 It allows a minute control and a very speedy response to any problem conditions. 153 00:07:49,840 --> 00:07:54,840 So, in these server rooms, you have a stack of sensors monitoring all this information 154 00:07:54,840 --> 00:07:55,840 all the time? 155 00:07:55,840 --> 00:07:56,840 Yeah. 156 00:07:56,840 --> 00:07:59,840 We have 30,000 sensors throughout the campus. 157 00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:03,840 We're about 1 million square feet of office space on top of a million square feet of garage, 158 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:08,840 four large server rooms, all running and happily keeping us employed. 159 00:08:09,840 --> 00:08:15,840 Electrically, we can drop down into any of the main panels and use this information to 160 00:08:15,840 --> 00:08:19,840 be very deliberate and smart about how we fill out a data center without unnecessarily increasing 161 00:08:19,840 --> 00:08:24,840 the risk by overloading a circuit or, you know, potentially tripping a breaker. 162 00:08:24,840 --> 00:08:25,840 Okay. 163 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:30,840 You're involved with demand response programs with your local provider PG&E as well? 164 00:08:30,840 --> 00:08:31,840 Absolutely. 165 00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:36,840 Any of the large electrical users in the state are asked to participate and Adobe, of course, 166 00:08:36,840 --> 00:08:43,840 was willing to do so, not just to get the energy reduction costs and, you know, cost per 167 00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:45,840 KW, but to try to do their part. 168 00:08:45,840 --> 00:08:51,840 So, we're able to kind of show our energy reductions if we use our energy dashboard here. 169 00:08:51,840 --> 00:08:53,840 And I'll bring this up just a second. 170 00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:57,840 And so, what we're looking at is a load profile. 171 00:08:57,840 --> 00:09:02,840 And so, we've divided our building loads up into what is the building, what is the server 172 00:09:02,840 --> 00:09:04,840 room, and how they interact with each other. 173 00:09:04,840 --> 00:09:08,840 And so, we're able to see here the different days of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 174 00:09:08,840 --> 00:09:10,840 Thursday, Friday, the weekend, and the portion of today. 175 00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:22,840 Lots of information electrically so we can try and increase our performance by eliminating waste. 176 00:09:22,840 --> 00:09:29,840 And so, basically, the better we do our job given the current conditions, the more money we save and the better the company does. 177 00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:30,840 And the less carbon you're emitting. 178 00:09:30,840 --> 00:09:32,840 Less carbon we're emitting, of course. 179 00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:38,840 We're able to track this information in dollars and cents and know what the data centers cost us, as well as the building. 180 00:09:38,840 --> 00:09:43,840 We can also click right over to the tab that gives us CO2 emissions. 181 00:09:43,840 --> 00:09:47,840 Now, right now, we're just tying in our electrical usages and next is natural gas. 182 00:09:47,840 --> 00:09:54,840 Okay, so these are actually charts of the CO2 emitted by the facility based on electrical usage at the moment. 183 00:09:54,840 --> 00:09:56,840 And as you say, you'll be tying in natural gas shortly. 184 00:09:56,840 --> 00:09:57,840 Exactly right. 185 00:09:57,840 --> 00:09:58,840 Great. 186 00:09:58,840 --> 00:10:00,840 Are you monitoring water through this as well? 187 00:10:00,840 --> 00:10:01,840 Oh, definitely. 188 00:10:01,840 --> 00:10:04,840 Water is one of our biggest successes. 189 00:10:04,840 --> 00:10:07,840 We've had lots of success in reducing our water usage. 190 00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:12,840 And the ways we've done that is simple things, just identifying the water wasting. 191 00:10:12,840 --> 00:10:17,840 Also, in terms of landscape, for instance, choosing plants that don't use a lot of water. 192 00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:23,840 And on top of that, we actually tied in weather satellites into our controllers so that we don't water when it's raining. 193 00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:26,840 Seems simple, but you try and get your building to do it. 194 00:10:26,840 --> 00:10:29,840 Superb. 195 00:10:29,840 --> 00:10:31,840 Gosh. 196 00:10:31,840 --> 00:10:40,840 We've also developed a forecasting module to help us to, again, improve our operations so that we're being as efficient as possible, 197 00:10:40,840 --> 00:10:43,840 given the current circumstances. 198 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:48,840 And so what we've done is we've tracked weather patterns that are similar to today's. 199 00:10:48,840 --> 00:10:52,840 We've chosen five out of our past two or three years of information. 200 00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:54,840 And the best we've ever done is this lower line. 201 00:10:54,840 --> 00:10:57,840 And the worst we've ever done is this upper line. 202 00:10:57,840 --> 00:10:59,840 And that's based on today's conditions. 203 00:10:59,840 --> 00:11:01,840 Here, in the red, is what we're doing today. 204 00:11:01,840 --> 00:11:03,840 So obviously, we're in between the best and the worst. 205 00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:04,840 And then we're shooting for the best, of course. 206 00:11:04,840 --> 00:11:05,840 Yep. 207 00:11:05,840 --> 00:11:09,840 We tied in this weather line to show the outdoor air temperature because that has a huge impact on how much energy we use. 208 00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:16,840 And so anything we can do to eliminate these spikes and peaks is going to end up saving us energy. 209 00:11:16,840 --> 00:11:17,840 Fantastic. 210 00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:18,840 Great. 211 00:11:18,840 --> 00:11:19,840 Super. 212 00:11:19,840 --> 00:11:20,840 Ted, thanks for being in. 213 00:11:20,840 --> 00:11:21,840 That's been fantastic. 214 00:11:21,840 --> 00:11:22,840 You're very welcome. 215 00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:22,840 Thanks for coming.