300 N LaSalle is a 57-story, 1.3 million square foot building rising 775 feet from the Chicago River. Designed by the internationally recognized firm Pickard Chilton, it is one the city’s tallest buildings and features an outdoor plaza and waterfront café. The high-rise opened in 2009 and is extremely energy efficient, earning ENERGY STAR Certification with a score of 87 out of 100. However, having a high energy efficiency score doesn’t mean there isn’t additional energy to be saved.

Hines sought out a creative, out-of-the-box thinking service provider that could find operational savings in an already high-performing building. After providing Hines with our approach to finding savings, Cyclone was selected as their service provider and the building was enrolled in ComEd’s Retro-Commissioning program. The program provides a fully funded study to the building that identifies no- and low-cost operational improvements that save energy and have an average simple payback of less than 1.5 years. The building implemented ten recommendations from Cyclone’s study that resulted in 1.1M kWh in verified electric savings, resulting in $90,000 in annual operational savings.