Project News

This past August, Platte County R3 School District completed the fourth year since the implementation of an energy performance contract. Each of the previous years the district has surpassed the predicted energy savings, but this past year was even more exceptional. Including the anticipated operations and maintenance savings the district recognized a total project cost avoidance savings of $617,804. This results in a surplus of $221,035 in savings relative to the projected savings of $396,796. This exceeds any of the prior year’s performance by over $120,000 which can be attributed to the COVID-19 shutdown. The graphic below provides an example to the energy reduction during the COVID-19 shutdown by looking at the electric demand during the month of May 2019 versus May of 2020.

About the author – Devin Klish is an Energy Manager with Navitas. Through the use of Data Analytics and other proprietary tools, he works to educate owners, occupants, and operators to further optimize facility operation and ongoing initiatives.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a special time of year where we spend time with our family and friends celebrating all that we have to be thankful for. Thanksgiving is also a special time of year for energy management. Over the extended holiday the buildings will be vacant of people and we see this as an energy savings opportunity.

Leading up to the break, Navitas energy managers engaged building leaders, custodians, and maintenance departments reminding them to turn off plug loads and lights in their building. Plug loads are defined as electronic devises that need to be plugged in. This includes TVs, radios, computers, anything that requires electricity to operate. By turning off lights and these devices, we capture energy savings as a result.

In addition to plug loads, we also capture energy savings by implementing a heating and cooling set point setback. A set point setback expands the heating and cooling set points allowing the space temperature to float while the HVAC equipment sits idle saving energy. Because of the sophisticated building automation system or BAS implemented during the energy performance contract, we are able to do this without compromising the end users’ comfort. The BAS starts the equipment earlier than normal on Monday morning, so the space temperature is back to normal when the building occupants return.

Figure 1: Total Electric Demand Over Thanksgiving Week

The example depicted in Figure 1 shows the total electric demand of Platte County R-3 School District’s buildings over the week of Thanksgiving and the following Monday. From the demand profile you are able to see when the building operates under normal conditions such as Monday, Tuesday and then again Monday. During this operation, the average electric demand per square foot is around 1 Watt. Since Tuesday’s weather closely matches the weather during the break, we will use its consumption of 21,670 kWh as our baseline. Now taking a look at the five days of operation with reduced plug loads and HVAC setbacks, (Wednesday – Sunday), we can see the electric demand has drastically been reduced down to an average of 0.2 Watts per square foot. This equates to an average of 7,075 kWh per day. If you take the kWh difference of the baseline (21,670) and the average daily holiday usage (7,075) and multiply by the five days of the holiday, we get a total kilowatt hour savings of 72,975 kWh. Multiplying this by $0.10 per kWh gives us a total cost avoidance savings of $7,298. This reduction in electric demand also equates to approximately 51.6 metric tons of greenhouse gas emission from being released. That amount is the same as a car driving from New York to Los Angeles and back 23 times! This is something definitely to be thankful for.

It is pretty easy to see how turning off electric devices and using heating cooling setbacks, Platte County School District was able to capture cost avoidance savings reducing their utility bills.

About the author – Devin Klish is an Energy Manager with Navitas. Through the use of Data Analytics and other proprietary tools, he works to educate owners, occupants, and operators to further optimize facility operation and ongoing initiatives.

Despite a two-month delay to the bond vote due to Covid-19, the Oak Grove School District began on-site construction activities following the ‘Yes’ vote on June 2nd. Navitas worked with subcontractors to adjust schedules and optimize the work to maintain many of the summer 2020 construction schedule goals.

Upon full implementation, this project will not only replace end of life heating and air conditioning equipment and improve building comfort, but ultimately save the district over $3,000,000 over 15 years in reduced utility costs.

In addition to this project, the district is also projecting to save another $600,000 in utilities by retrofitting interior lights to LED. We are excited for this partnership with the Oak Grove School District; to be able to save a substantial amount of funding for the district and positively affect the learning environment for a new generation of students.

Navitas is pleased to announce that we are working with Fort Osage School District to help them improve their facilities and create a better learning environment for their students.

The Fort Osage School District is a school district in Jackson County Missouri, mostly serving the eastern side of Independence and rural areas of the county. The district consists of one high school, one middle school, and seven elementary schools.

The district is planning on a bond issue in the near future, but as with many schools there is always more needs than funds to address building issues. One of the biggest maintenance needs the district faced was aging, leaky roofs on three of their buildings.

Navitas conducted a comprehensive investment grade audit to identify other facility needs and develop energy conservation measures. One of the primary goals of the district was to address the roofs. The biggest reason was the looming maintenance concerns and funds spent to constantly repair.

But additionally, by addressing the roofs through this mechanism the district will not have to encumber bond funds in their next bond issue to repair/replace their roofs. Now bond funds can be used to address other educational needs.

We were able to identify energy savings opportunities by changing out old fluorescent lighting, and upgrading the aging, cumbersome building automation system through the district. These two items alone provided a large amount of energy and operational savings to help fund other maintenance needs.

The district worked with their financial advisor to obtain a lease purchase to finance their project. Savings from this project will create an annual positive cash flow for the district over the 20-year term.

By partnering with Navitas and leveraging the energy savings from our project, the district was able to address around $5,000,000 of roofing projects and maintain a cash flow neutral project over the term of their lease purchase.