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

Wynot is a rural school district in northeast Nebraska. The school district has one building that houses their elementary, middle, and high school. The district has done a good job maintaining and updating their facility. The next part of their facility plan is to update the original portions of the building (built in 1912 and 1922). The district administration and school board wanted to make sure that they were using their resources effectively to fund the updates for this portion of the building.

One of the largest challenges associated with the building update was the need to modernize the HVAC and electrical systems. This portion of the building was being heated by steam radiators (some of which were original to the building) and cooled by window air-conditioners. This portion of the building did not have mechanical ventilation to the spaces. So, the school district chose to partner with Navitas to develop a modern, energy efficient system that would provide properly ventilated and comfortable spaces for the students and staff.

Navitas worked with the district to find the best system to meet these needs and find other energy savings opportunities to help fund these improvements. We also helped the district apply and receive a low interest (1.00%) loan from their local bank, which was subsidized by the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy. Since the school district was able to fund the HVAC and other improvements with this approach, they could use their existing resources to speed up the timeline for making other improvements, including the conversion of their administration area into a pre-school facility.

The Wynot School District used an energy savings performance contract (ESPC) as a means to more effectively meet their holistic facility plans. This allowed them to be good stewards of their resources and help to provide additional services to their students and community.

Navitas is thankful to be working with such a great district and great people.

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.