GREENFIELD — After announcing in March that the city’s new Fire Station used 250% more energy than anticipated, Director of Energy and Sustainability Carole Collins said teams have identified the problem and are working to solve it.

The engineering firm Consulting Engineering Services (CES), which designed the all-electric 20,000-square-foot facility, is currently conducting an audit and verification scope of the approximately $21.7 million building’s energy use alongside city staff and Eversource representatives.

Collins, in an interview last week, said that a report from the verification scope showed that high-tech equipment that is in need of modifications, including heating and cooling systems, were some of the main culprits for the high energy use.

“It has been a lot of work to get to this place where we are still on target and we are going to be able to expect to use what the building was designed to use, in terms of energy and operation,” Collins said. “We learned of the problem, we addressed it, we put everything at it from all sides and we’re on our way to fixing all of this.”

Although Collins did not go into detail to explain how and why certain features of the building were using so much electricity, she noted that the building’s high-tech components — such as its heat pump or floor base heating system — seem to all be functioning properly, but some needed to be modified to be more energy-efficient.

“There’s just a lot of components that go into a building like this that’s very efficient and high performing,” Collins said. “Most of it had to do with settings and [needed] modifications. … It’s very common the first year of a new building that you spend time tightening things up and making sure everything’s operating correctly — fine-tuning everything. This was a bit more than that, but it’s all on the right track now and we’re getting there.”

With the verification scope expected to last 12 months, Collins said the team working to address energy usage is expecting the building to be operating with its initially anticipated energy efficiency by next year.

When asked about the ongoing process at a recent Public Safety Commission meeting, Fire Chief Robert Strahan noted that firefighters have been using energy cautiously since the problem was identified. He said the building’s equipment seems to be functioning properly and added that the Fire Department will be able to better understand the issue as more verification scope reports are completed.

Deputy Fire Chief Peter McIver added that as part of an incentive from Eversource, there are submeters that read individual panels within the building. He said representatives from Eversource are reading the meters and tracking the facility’s energy flow.

“The gentleman from Eversource that was here last week was going to get the access to those [submeters] so that they can monitor them in real time and start trending where the largest loads are,” McIver said. “Then we could narrow down what equipment is off of that because their initial walk-through did not reveal anything that was indomitable.”

Strahan added that Central Maintenance Facilities Director Joe Pugliese has visited the Fire Station multiple times to help study its energy usage.

“We’re working pretty diligently to try to identify exactly what’s going on with it,” Strahan said. “I know the firefighters are trying to make sure the lights are off, even though that’s such a small [thing]. We’re trying to identify it, but we’re trying to make sure that we’re doing our part, too.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.