IMEG’s design of the River Trails School District’s Prairie Trails School in Mount Prospect, IL, won an ASHRAE Illinois Chapter Excellence in Engineering Award. The project renovated an existing early learning center into a highly sustainable, net-zero certified project.  

Using innovative design and monitoring, the project achieved PHIUS+, the passive building energy standard. The team monitored the building throughout its first year of operation to confirm it meets the requirements for true net zero operation. The engineers and architect used Power BI to continually monitor the energy usage of the facility, as well as the electricity production from the solar PV array. This allowed the team to monitor the data for any issues in the system that needed to be addressed and track progress toward true net zero operation.  

The school is modeled to perform at an EUI of 23.9 kBTU/SF/year and has an actual EUI of 23.35 kBTU/SF/year, as of March 2023. 

Read the project case study here.