Facility Energy Workshop Report

Dec. 9, 2010 | Glenwood Springs Community Center

Saving energy by engaging building occupants

The second quarterly Facility Energy Workshop, held Dec. 9, 2010, focused on motivating the people who work in schools and office buildings to save energy by using data and the spirit of competition.

“When you turn people onto the size of the opportunity, you can make impressive savings,” said Mike Ogburn of CLEER, which hosts the quarterly workshop along with SGM Inc., New Energy Technology and Garfield Clean Energy.

“The Carbondale wastewater treatment plant recently implemented another blower shutdown after their recent plant upgrade, and they now on track for $52,000 a year in energy savings,” Ogburn said. “The Glenwood Springs Community Center did a shutdown over the Thanksgiving holiday and saved 26 percent of their electricity during those two days off.”

The two speakers, Charley Haupt, president of New Energy Technology, and Michael Kirk, facilities manager for Larimer County, said getting people engaged in energy saving is essential to success.

“Energy efficiency first lies with your people. Once your people are in alignment, then you can look at your equipment,” Haupt said. Haupt’s company, NET, has been achieving impressive energy and cost saving results through its work with the Roaring Fork and Garfield Re-2 school districts.

“In many cases, people attack the problem first from the equipment side, and the problem doesn’t go away. You need to develop a culture of energy efficiency and get your people on board. Then the equipment upgrades you do later on can hit the home run,” Haupt said.

Kirk explained Larimer County’s approach of building a team of county government employees who have access to building energy data and are empowered to suggest ways to cut energy use.

“It’s paramount that we start reducing energy use to offset the increases in energy costs that are coming,” Kirk said.

Larimer County ACES empower county staff to save energy

The Larimer County team is called the ACES, which stands for accountability, conservation, empowerment and stewardship. Kirk cited a fifth key factor – passion – which takes advantage of the inspiration and drive these 22 county employees have for saving energy.

“We are trying to establish a culture around energy. We want to empower our employees. They already have the passion, but they do not necessarily feel empowered,” Kirk said.

“As we make energy conservation a centerpiece of our policy, the ACES are empowered to say, ‘Turn off your lights, turn off your computer.’ We are empowering people to take responsibility and be a good steward of public resources,” he said.

On Nov. 15, the ACES launched a 10-week “Power It Down” competition centered in Larimer County’s five-story, 120,000-square-foot courthouse in downtown Fort Collins, where 375 people work. The five floors are competing against each other to cut energy use, and Kirk has already seen a 5 percent cut in power use.

Kirk installed energy monitors for each floor of the building, and the ACES team has daily access to monitor read-outs along with the building’s overall utility bills – information that isn’t usually shared with the average employee. That data is giving the team immediate results on their efforts.

Before the competition started, the 22 ACES team members went through every room in the courthouse doing an audit of equipment.

“We found that in a building where we had 375 people, we had 113 printers,” Kirk said. “That gave us something to target. So we are getting them unplugged and reducing the overall number, which will have other financial benefits for the county. We would have never known that if we hadn’t done the audit.”

In 2011, he plans to build the ACES team up to more than 100 county employees and take the energy challenge to all 23 county buildings through a building-to-building competition. He wants to provide plenty of flexibility for department- and building-specific initiatives so workers can tailor energy conservation efforts that work.

Kirk advised the facility managers at the workshop that winning support from top-level administrators was essential for success.

“It has to be top-down to be successful. Our county manager and top administrators were sold, because they knew there was a lot of savings potential. The energy bill for the county is a little under $1 million, as our budget started to shrink, people become very open to do things that would save dollars,” Kirk said.

School districts save thousands of dollars during holiday shutdowns

In Garfield County, school districts are winning the energy challenge so far, said Charley Haupt of New Energy Technology. The Grand Junction-based company consults with corporations and school districts across the country.

NET and its school district partners are using a powerful combination of daily building energy data and committed facility managers and students.

For school districts, holidays and summer breaks are particularly ripe times for energy savings gains, said Haupt. Schools have lowered their energy bills and making steady increases in their ENERGY STAR ratings.

They are taking advantage of building shutdowns to conserve energy. Like the Larimer County ACES, Roaring Fork and Garfield Re-2 students and custodians are auditing buildings to find and unplug equipment that won’t be needed over the weekend, a holiday break or the long summer recess, Haupt said.

For example, Sopris Elementary School in Glenwood Springs cut energy use from May through September 2010 by 38 percent, saving the Roaring Fork School District $7,420. Rifle High School made a big leap in its ENERGY STAR rating this year, climbing from a 48 last spring to a 65 in August.

The 1-to-100 ENERGY STAR scale compares buildings with similar uses nationwide and factors in weather differences. Buildings that hit a rating of 75, meaning they are more energy efficient that three-quarters of the other buildings of their type nationwide, are eligible to receive an ENERGY STAR award and plaque.

The school savings were all achieved through changes of habit, such as turning off lights when rooms or the gym aren’t in use, unplugging small refrigerators and other appliances.

Carbondale Middle School, now in its second year of aggressive energy saving efforts with NET, achieved a 31 percent improvement in its Thanksgiving shutdown compared to shutdown savings in 2009.

“The difference is the students who are involved, the Energy Champions,” Haupt said. “When you get your building occupants in alignment with your facility folks, then you have a real chance.”

Haupt is a big fan of interval data electric meters, which give a next-day readout of building energy consumption in 15-minute intervals. A typical chart for a school shows energy use spiking in the morning as staff and teachers arrive, and then gradually dropping off in the late afternoon as the building empties out.

“This is your surveillance. You know something happened, like frozen pipes or a Friday night football game, and you see it the next day in the profile,” Haupt said.

“Having this next-day information allows you, as energy managers, to ask, ‘Was that supposed to be running? How can I better manage this?’ You can make good decisions daily with that 15-minute interval data, and that rolls up into your monthly performance on the utility bill,” he added.