GREENFIELD — The city’s Fire Station at 41 Main St., a roughly $21.7 million construction project that opened last May, uses 250% more energy than anticipated, according to Greenfield’s Energy and Sustainability Director Carole Collins.

The engineering firm Consulting Engineering Services (CES), which designed the all-electric 20,000-square-foot facility, will conduct an audit of the building’s energy use, as Collins said she is unsure whether the unexpected jump was caused by an inaccurate prediction prior to the building’s construction, a potential issue with the building itself or occupancy operations.

“We’ve been making sure that, from an operations standpoint, there’s nothing that is being done in-house that’s causing anything to contribute to [the high energy usage],” Fire Chief Robert Strahan said. “We haven’t found anything, but the design team is really looking at some of the specs that they have. … They haven’t, to my knowledge, identified areas of concern.”

Strahan pointed out that this winter was particularly cold compared to the past few seasons, which could have resulted in more electric heat usage.

“I think that what is happening is that there’s something that’s not lining up to what was predicted … or there’s something that’s malfunctioning that’s causing this,” Strahan said. “We’re still looking at our practices as well, making sure that it’s nothing that we’re doing. The last couple months have been colder than we have seen for several years. We’ve had a longer colder stretch in the last couple months then we saw the last three winters. I don’t know if that’s a contributing factor, but I do know that we are going to take a look at it at multiple levels and try to come up with an answer.”

Collins noted at a previous Fire Station Building Committee meeting that although Greenfield High School is roughly 10 times the size of the station, it uses less energy.

The Greenfield Public Library, despite being “fabulously energy-efficient,” also saw an uptick in energy usage during its first year of operation, Collins noted.

Collins said the city was eligible for, and received, a roughly $78,000 grant from Eversource for its expected energy-efficiency specifications. Although Collins added that the city will not have to return the grant funding, she hopes to bring the high-tech facility in line with predicted energy usage rates.

In approximately one year, she said, Eversource’s post-occupancy energy-efficiency rating will determine if the city is eligible for further funding.

“It’s just inherent in how complicated these buildings are. It’s kind of like cars — they’re all computers now,” Collins said. “We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to keep it in line with what we expected. It could be that it does use more than was modeled. … I want to get to the bottom of it. We’ll definitely keep plugging away.”

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