Northwest center gets rebate for energy-saving features

Money provided by Nevada Power Co.

View File pHotoThe Centennial Hills Community Center, 6601 N. Buffalo Drive, recently earned the city of Las Vegas a $25,961.40 rebate from the Nevada Power Co.?s Sure Bet program for green building initiatives. Advertisement

Green thinking has resulted in green results for the city of Las Vegas and its Centennial Hills Community Center.

That's green, as in the color of money.

The city has received a $25,961.40 rebate check from Nevada Power Co. because of the energy-saving features at the year-old community center at 6601 N. Buffalo Drive. The 98,385-square-foot building is part of Nevada Power's Sure Bet, a five-year-old program that provides incentive rebates for commercial buildings that are built with sustainability in mind.

Mike Vlaovich, the architectural project manager for the Centennial Hills center who works in the city's Public Works division, said the rebate would go to the city's general fund.

"We like to be able to turn as much money as possible back into the general fund so it can go toward more projects like this one," he said.

When the Centennial Hills center was being conceptualized in 2003, the city was in the midst of shifting its new project priorities, from trying to get the most out of available square footage considering rising construction costs to thinking about sustainability and saving money in the long term, Vlaovich said.

The center was involved in the Sure Bet program from its inception, with Nevada Power offering technical assistance and reviewing plans, in addition to the promise of a rebate.

"There is no maximum amount a customer can receive. We have rebates issued for $1,000, and others are $100,000," said Mary Ann Sheehan, senior project manager for the Nevada Power program. "Sure Bet is specifically designed for commercial customers, but we have other residential programs, as well as Sure Bet for schools, and also a program that works with retro-fitting hotels and motels under 200 rooms. But with this program, we have seen a lot more customers in the past year, working with different city and government entities."

Sure Bet basically will help pay for any building feature that will produce quantifiable energy savings.

Sheehan said the most common features to accomplish that deal with lighting, heating and air conditioning, and those are the systems on which the planners behind the Centennial Hills center focused.

"All the lamps and light fixtures fall within the guidelines for the incentives, and another big part is the use of day lighting," Vlaovich said. "We really tried to control that to maximum potential, as well as putting controls to read light levels and adjust versus just having people control the lights all the time."

The building also is one of the first recreation facilities in the valley to earn the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, which has become the nationally accepted benchmark for the operation of high performance green buildings. In fact, Vlaovich said, the city of Las Vegas has mandated that all buildings reach LEED silver certification.

"This was kind of the first one, and now there's another center out to bid that probably will present a little bit of a challenge among us to get a bigger rebate," he said. "Centennial Hills is kind of the first bar set, and we'll try to do better than that now."

The energy-saving effort doesn't stop with recreation centers. Nevada Power will be holding a conservation fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on May 10 at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve Crossroad Commons Amphitheater, 333 S. Valley View Blvd. For more information, visit www.springspreserve.org or www.nevadapower.com.

For more information about the Sure Bet program, visit www.nevadapower.com or call 579-1111.