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Colleges and universities throughout the country are taking a hard look at their facilities. Most of these institutions have buildings that are at least 30 years old and they need to be updated. Today’s Gen-Z students also demand certain amenities that schools struggle to provide. Couple these problems with utility costs that continue to rise and shrinking operational & maintenance budgets, many of our colleges feel like they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They know what needs to be done and work hard to stretch every dollar to get things done, but the money only goes so far.

College leaders and governing board members struggle to develop a financial model that generates adequate funding for needs. And so, buildings continue to be neglected because tight budgets have forced the administration to take a deferred maintenance approach to maintaining their facilities. After all, “deferred maintenance” is sounds much better than “neglected maintenance.” This takes a heavy toll on campus facilities and does not help with the enrollment struggle of trying to attract and retain Gen-Z students. After all strong enrollment is essential for the financial health of a college or university.

Energy Conservation as a Solution

There is a nontraditional solution that can redirect monies already in your budget to pay for facility improvements and upgrades. Many campuses are full of building equipment and systems that are outdated and energy thirsty. Deferred maintenance and other budget issues often make it hard to upgrade these systems. But replacing energy-thirsty equipment with newer energy efficient systems can save money in utility costs. Done properly, upgrading these outdated systems can actually pay for themselves and fund other improvements. Most importantly, this approach complies with both state and federal statutes related to energy services and performance-based contracting.

Here is how to make it work:

• Find a professional energy service company (ESCO) that can help you develop a strategy for improving your institution’s financial health.

• With the ESCO’s help and expertise, conduct and energy audit. A comprehensive energy audit of your college facilities will help you identify inefficient systems and equipment that is costly to operate.

• The ESCO will develop a turn-key solution that may develop into a project that is completely “paid from energy savings.” The key to making this work is to find an ESCO consultant that you can trust. One who is focused on addressing your unique needs rather than using a “one-size fits all” approach.

• The improvements often include upgrades to the mechanical systems, lighting, water fixtures, windows, and other building envelope upgrades. These can be paid for over time with the savings generated in your monthly utility bills.

Benefits from an Energy Conservation Project

Below are some of the benefits that have been expressed by higher ed leaders who have utilized a “paid from energy savings” approach:

Become Better Stewards of Resources

• By addressing needs and improving living conditions on campus, the college is becoming a better steward of resources.

• Using sustainability and “green” initiatives to generate a new revenue stream can get donors excited and more willing to contribute.

• It creates practical “asks” for donor funding of tasks, which can be marketed as “the gift that keeps on giving” back to the university through utility savings. This method speaks to a college’s commitment for the long run!

Attracting & Retaining Students, Faculty, and Staff

• Improving the quality and comfort of the learning environment goes a long way to attract Gen-Z students. In addition, upgraded facilities make it easier to attract and retain quality faculty and staff.

• Implementing an energy conservation program shows that your institution is being a good steward of the environment. This helps promote a culture of social responsibility on your campus. It is a testimony to a forward-looking college or university.

No Donor Gifts or Operational Funds Required

• Saving energy means saving money. An energy conservation program can be implemented in a budget-neutral manner. The improvements are paid for from the utility savings associated with the program.

• Since the turn-key solution offered through our program does not have up-front costs, the project demonstrates fiduciary responsibility of donor gifts and operational funds.

Facility Maintenance Benefits

• Implementing an energy conservation program allows you to update your aging or failing building systems using existing utility dollars.

• Upgraded building systems reduces the need for outsourced maintenance, which reduces maintenance costs. It also frees your facilities team to focus on preventive maintenance.

Environmental Benefits

• By conserving energy, you reduce your campus carbon footprint, which contributes to a better environment, both locally and globally.

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About the author – Kent Clow is a business development manager with Navitas. His background includes working as a customer advocate in business and contract management with 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry. This helps him bring a practical approach to developing strategies for higher education clients who want guidance in how to initiate an energy conservation program in their campus operations. He also serves as a trustee with Culver-Stockton College and can be reached at kclow@navitas.us.com.

The following Navitas article was published in the January edition of the Missouri Association of School Business Officials (MoASBO) Enews publication with the title “Finding Dollars Within Your Existing School District Budget to Re-Invest into Facilities”. MoASBO is a professional association of Missouri school district officials and employees whose expertise is in the area of school business administration. (https://www.moasbo.org)

When looking for ways for your school district to operate more efficiently, the “rock” to turn over with the greatest amount of savings is most likely energy management. All around us, embedded in every building is a vast, untapped energy resource: efficiency. Many times, this resource is hidden, ignored, or misunderstood by school districts that are sitting on the potential.

Today, school districts in the United States spend about $8 billion annually on energy costs alone, which is more than the cost of textbooks and computers combined. When a school district receives the utility bills, they are sent to Accounts Payable for processing. Often, there isn’t enough time to take a hard look to see where the school district could be saving money.

Every year, K-12 facilities waste millions of dollars in excess energy consumption. Those dollars may take the form of lost heat through walls, windows, doors, and roofs. By being intentional about cutting utility costs, school districts can easily reap savings that can be used to help fund greater needs within the district.

Excess funds that districts are sending to the local utility companies can either be invested back into the facilities to address deferred maintenance issues, or possibly as a new source of funding for other pressing instructional needs.

Top Energy Wasters

Some of the top energy wasters include:

• Inefficient Energy Managements Systems – a poorly configured energy management system can waste 20% – 25% of your gas and electricity dollars.
• Lack of Central Plant Optimization – The typical workhorses of your heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system are boilers, chillers, pumps, and cooling towers. If these systems are not properly optimized, they can be very costly to operate.
• Postponed Preventive Maintenance – Even the most routine maintenance, like changing filters, can greatly enhance the energy efficiency of a building system.
• Inefficient Lighting Systems – Lighting systems have made tremendous advances in technology and efficiency in recent years. Systems with built-in occupancy control, daylight sensors, and automatic dimming are cost-efficient ways to reduce electricity consumption and demand.
• Outdated Plumbing Fixtures – K-12 facilities are large consumers of water. Installing water conserving plumbing fixtures can result in significant savings.
• Wasteful Boiler Systems – Boilers are sized to meet the greatest potential demand on the system. Unfortunately, this means that for 90% of the year they are oversized.

Over the years of conducting energy audits, we have encountered a lot of strange things that leave us scratching our heads. Some of the time, these items were known to school administrators and facility directors, but the district lacked funds to address them. Other times, these items were unknown and had been issues for years!

Below are a few of those “head scratcher” situations. Are any of these occurring in your buildings? What other problems might be lurking and causing issues with your utility bill?

• Building controls with setback temperatures for the evening that were swapped between summer and winter set points. This meant that during the winter the building was heated to 80°F at night and during the summer it was cooled to 65°F at night.
• Heating/cooling equipment that was being maintained to exactly 70°F. This meant the units had to constantly swap between heating and cooling to maintain the temperature at exactly 70°F all year.
• A snow melt system that was left on during the summer because a breaker was mistakenly switched on.
• Underground steam piping that leaked so bad that the snow melted and would not build up on the ground above it.
• A fountain in front of a building that had a water overflow sensor malfunction that caused the fountain to constantly drain and fill for an entire summer.
• Underground hot water piping that had such significant leaks it meant continuous refilling and heating of the hot water tanks.
• Missing filters in the air handlers of a science lab that caused the need for coil replacements because they were being clogged.
• Windows that had air gaps between the window and wall big enough to put your finger through.

Start Saving Money Now

The money to make the appropriate modifications is already available in your current budget, if you are willing to find it. Here are a few suggestions:

• Conducting an energy audit of your school facilities will help you will find inefficient systems, infrastructure, and equipment that is costly to operate. By gaining a deep understanding of how these systems work, how people interact with them, and keeping the focus on improving performance great savings can be achieved.
• Providing proper equipment training to your maintenance staff will often pay for itself. When maintenance staff know how and when to provide maintenance and modifications building equipment and the energy management system, it results in energy savings.
• Many times, the cost to upgrade HVAC systems, lighting, windows and roofs, can be paid for over time with the saving generated in your monthly utility bills.
• Don’t just pay the utility bills – track them. Ensure that you have developed an energy baseline before you start your projects, so you can track your savings. Also, when you track utility bills, be sure to benchmark your utility consumption against other K-12 facilities in your geographic area so can compare how you are doing.
• Find a professional energy services firm that can help you integrate the process. Ultimately, there are many firms in Missouri that have expertise in the energy field. Contact your energy services firm to discover how much funding your school could find with improved energy efficiency!

Click here to view this article on the MoASO website.

About the author – Paul Harrell is a business development manager with Navitas. His background as a Certified Public Accountant and 33 years of experience in the education sector help him bring a practical approach to developing strategies for school districts wanting guidance in how to manage their overall budget and utility costs. He can be reached at pharrell@navitas.us.com or 913-344-0049.

The following Navitas article was published in the Summer 2018 issue of the Missouri School Plant Manager magazine, published by PTR Communications. The Missouri School Plant Manager magazine is the official publication of the Missouri School Plant Manager’s Association (http://www.mspma.com). If you would like a PDF of the article, click here.

Building owners and operators are all eventually challenged with aging facilities. Often patrons or customers of those buildings are focused on the aesthetics and functionality of the interior space, but operators know aging facilities present more challenges that just the aesthetic. I have heard many school administrators lament over community members that oppose school building projects, especially when a building must be abandoned. The reasons for this are wide-ranging and mixed, from genuine financial concerns to pure nostalgia for the building.

Regardless, wherever community concern is generated, we in the facility management industry are often tasked with recommending and justifying decisions made around building projects – many of which an average patron of the building will never recognize. One way we have found that can help justify actions and actually save money at the same time is through the use of data analytics. The added insight the data provides on how a building is operated can justify decisions on how a building is run, diagnose comfort concerns from occupants, identify humidity issues, improve and optimize maintenance plans, etc.

Additionally, in the last few years, the ability for facility managers to collect and use data have helped many school districts decrease their utility consumption by 20-35%. While energy costs may not be top of mind to most school building operators, what benefit could the decrease of payments to the utility return to your school? What flexibility would those savings provide you on facility projects?

The use of data analytics has greatly helped building operators understand what is happening in their building. By gathering data points in real time, operators can understand how a building consumes energy. With that information, informed decisions can be

made on how to decrease energy use while maintaining comfort for building occupants.

Take the example, shown in Figures 1 & 2, of a building before and after optimization. Figure 1 shows a building with a typical spike in electric consumption during the day and decreased usage in the evening. However, this building’s temperature set points maintained 70°F all weekend instead of going into unoccupied mode as intended.

1. Temperature set point was inadvertently changed to 70°F all weekend.

2. Heating units stagger during the weekdays but are on most of the time over the weekend.

3. As a result of increased usage, electric consumption increases dramatically for the weekend. This consumption can be quantified to determine the financial impact of this one building automation decision.

Figure 2 depicts the graph of the electric consumption after building optimization. Here you can see a dramatic decrease of electric consumption over the weekend.

4. Room space temperatures gradually decrease until reaching 60°F, then are maintained at 60°F until Monday morning.

5. Units on/off status. Note the units stagger on and off to maintain temperature as needed.

6. Electric consumption is very low during unoccupied hours, with a few spikes to account for units firing to maintain 60°F.

We have seen school buildings operate in both of these scenarios, as well as unintended operation of buildings during snow days or holiday breaks. Aside from the difference in energy costs, there is the potential to decrease maintenance costs as well. Upon implementation of data analytics, one school recognized some inefficiencies in their system, and made changes that changed their equipment run times from 7,000 hours annually to 1,000 hours – a decrease of 85%! If equipment could effectively run that much less, how much would your school district save in maintenance? How many fewer failures and service calls would be required? How much longer would your equipment last? How much could your finances be impacted if equipment performs better & lasts longer?

Data analytics is also helping facility managers identify hard to diagnose issues. Take the graph shown in Figure 3 as an example. This graph depicts actual electricity consumed over ten days. The first two days show the electricity consumed over the weekend at an average of 43 kW. As staff arrives on Monday morning, electricity spikes up as lights, computers, coffee pots, etc. are fired up, then the electric consumption drops back to around 43 kW at night. This pattern is consistent for about a week, but for a building this size we would expect the overnight electric consumption to be significantly less.

We noticed this abnormally high consumption and contacted the facility director. We determined that while the building automation set the temperatures back at night, the vestibule cabinet unit heaters had a high temperature set-point, and essentially were attempting to heat the entire building during unoccupied hours. By simply adjusting the thermostats in the cabinet heaters, the building reduced the baseload by about 29 kW, resulting in over $2,000 per month saved on their electric bill. Without data analytics, this problem may never have been diagnosed.

Other problems we’ve found through data analytics that might never have been diagnosed include:

• Heating and cooling at the same time
• A snow melt system powered on during the summer
• Summer and winter night setback temperatures swapped (during winter unoccupied hours, the building would heat to 80°F instead of maintaining 60°F
• How one room remaining in occupied mode overnight can cause a large cooling tower with over 30 hp of pump and fan motors to remain in operation
• Wireless thermostats losing communication, which caused heat to be engaged during cooling months
• How cleaning staff pushed every override button in a building over a 20 minute period every night, causing a spike in electricity demand, and a 400 ton chiller to be unnecessarily be engaged after 11:00 at night.
• How much it costs the district to operate HVAC equipment in a gym for the community men’s Sunday basketball league.

The role data analytics can play for a school district is partly to catch errors and inefficiencies, but also to show the district how much it costs for certain activities or behaviors. From there, district personnel can make informed decisions on how their buildings should be operated, or how much they should be charging for the use of facilities.

What could data analytics show about your buildings? What is happening inside your buildings when they’re unoccupied? Could a platform like this help you diagnose issues you think you have? Or issues you don’t yet know about?

Ultimately, energy savings strategies like the ones discussed in this article can play a part in funding the renewal of your buildings. This can allow you to keep as much money funneled into education as possible, instead of maintaining old, inefficient equipment. Talk to your energy services provider and consultants to determine how data analytics can be of value to your district.

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About the author – Ryan Terry is a business development manager with Navitas. His background as a professional engineer and 15 years of experience in the energy industry help him bring a practical approach to developing strategies for public sector clients who want guidance in how to initiate an energy conservation program in their facilities. You can email him at rterry@navitas.us.com.