New Xcel Energy Service Center Gets LEED Silver Certified

The U.S. Green Building Council has awarded the Xcel Energy Ashland Service Center a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design New Construction (LEED® NC) Silver Certification.

The single-story building located at 2400 Farm Rd. in Ashland, Wis., occupies approximately 10 acres of a 30-acre parcel. The exterior area includes an employee/visitor parking lot, material staging, and storage and storm water management facilities, all secured with fencing and gates. The remaining acres, which include wetlands, have gone untouched.

“Xcel Energy is committed to the environment by maintaining and operating facilities with a focus on ‘green’ values,” said David Franke, director of facilities at Xcel Energy. “Over time, and when opportunities arise, changes to facilities and new construction will meet LEED criteria to reduce our impact on the environment and provide long-term operational cost savings.”

Developed by the U.S. Green Business Council in 1998, LEED is the world’s leading green building certification system. Structures that receive LEED certification have been designed and constructed using strategies with a focus on sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

“Our goal was to make the building and work spaces as energy efficient as possible,” Franke said. “The Ashland Service Center scored very well in the indoor environmental quality, water efficiency, and materials and resources categories.”

Some of the project’s sustainable features include:

• More than 20 percent energy savings over base model.
• Carpet, floor and ceiling tiles made of recycled material.
• More than 80 tons of construction waste was recycled from the site.
• The majority of wood products used in the building are Forest Stewardship Council certified.
• The building site features 200,000 square feet of vegetated open space, a wet detention basin to treat storm water run-off and minimal exterior lighting to preserve night sky.
• Natural landscaping and berming were used in an effort to screen the more industrious portions of the yard from the State Highway 13 approach to the City of Ashland.

Approximately 30 Xcel Energy employees in the previous service center on U.S. Highway 2, plus the garage and substation department, were consolidated and moved to the new service center in October 2010.

While the Ashland Service Center is the first LEED-certified Xcel Energy project in Wisconsin, the company has four other LEED-certified projects – one in Minnesota and three in Colorado.

For more information about Xcel Energy, visit www.xcelenergy.com.