Rishi Tea, growing at a rate of 10 percent per year, designed and built a new state-of-the-art 50,000 square foot facility in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley using the Focus on Energy Design Assistance Program. The Program provides building owners, builders, developers and design professionals with analysis of energy-saving options for the design of new buildings. In addition, the program offers incentives to design teams and to building owners, which can be used to reduce the upfront cost of high-efficiency measures that exceed Wisconsin energy code requirements.
The Design Assistance Program provided a whole building energy analysis for Rishi’s specialized manufacturing facility, which has very strict environmental requirements including humidification. The strict requirements and the awareness that maintaining the tight humidity set points would be a significant contributor to energy usage led to the implementation of direct expansion (DX) cooling efficiencies. These systems, which resulted in nearly 30 percent savings over the Program baseline, are vital in keeping the tea leaves, herbs and spices used in Rishi Tea’s increasingly organic products fresh and uncompromised. To read more