This article was published on Wednesday December 28th, 2011 in the Middletown Journal by Eric Robinette, Staff Reporter and features Ohio Schools as well as Innovative Energy Solutions work to make these public facilities more energy efficient and saving thousands in tax dollars.

Savings

While utility bills for homes have been increasing, many area school districts have seen their bills drop thanks to a variety of energy conservation programs.

And thanks to those bills dropping, the districts can put money back into their general fund, creating less drain on taxpayer dollars. And in at least one case, that has enabled a district to delay putting a levy on the ballot.

Middletown City Schools has seen some of the most dramatic decreases. A little more than three years ago, the district contracted with a Hamilton consulting firm called Innovative Energy Solutions. At that time, the district’s gas/electric bill came out to $1.9 million a year. Now it’s down to $1.2 million a year, said Mark Putnam, the president of that company.

Ron Klapper, the district’s manager of operations, estimated that last year alone, the district saved $500,000.

Middletown also has eight new elementary school buildings, and all eight of them received an Energy Star certification from the United States Environmental Protection Agency meaning they’re in the lowest 25 percent of energy usage nationwide,

“That’s pretty darn amazing … for two years we have been certified and have received that (rating). That’s more schools than any district in Ohio ” Putnam said.

These savings are achieved through a combination of newer, more energy-efficient buildings, more comprehensive energy plans and modern technology.

One of the keys to the program is a complex control center, akin to a very elaborate programmable thermostat.

In the control center, each building is divided into specific zones for which temperatures can be controlled individually. These zones can also be put on timers to kick on and off at various times, Putnam said.

With the hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings, the district can generate a positive cash flow and use the extra dollars on preventive maintenance it could not previously afford, he added.

Currently, the control centers are only used in the eight elementary schools. The energy plan will be extended to the middle schools and the high school once officials determine the future use of those buildings, Putnam said.

Hamilton City Schools’ energy situation is comparable to Middletown’s, in that both districts have new buildings that have netted the district considerable savings, said Jim Boerke, Hamilton’s director of planning, operations and construction management.

According to figures provided by Treasurer Robert Hancock, the district’s utility bill dropped from $2.6 million in 2006 to $2.1 million this year.

“Some of the savings may be attributable to price fluctuations for utilities from year to year.  There is no doubt that our buildings are more energy efficient and that efficiency has contributed greatly to our utility costs not increasing as a result of the larger buildings that were necessary as part of the redesign of the school district facilities,” Hancock said.

Like Middletown, Hamilton also has a computerized climate control system, the flexibility of which produces numerous benefits.

“We can control it minute by minute and we can see every box to tweak the temperature in the room,” Boerke said. The control center can lead to significant settings with a simple command. When the district has a snow day, the buildings’ boilers can be shut down, saving 2,000 kilowatts of energy per building. Previously, the boilers would have kept running, Boerke said. In so doing, the district saves $1,000 each snow day.

And those figures can add up as well. The heat in the buildings is typically turned down on Sunday, and doing so puts $70,000 a year in the district’s pocket,” Boerke, said.

Unlike Hamilton, Fairfield doesn’t have numerous new school buildings to contend with — only the high school and East Elementary are recently built structures. Even so, Fairfield City Schools’ utility bill went from $2.2 million four years ago to $1.3 million this year, said the superintendent for business, Chad Lewis.

“We saved $1 million after 32 months. I don’t know any district that can’t afford to save $1 million,” he said.

Although Fairfield also uses modern devices like computer-controlled thermostats, their energy-saving efforts rely less on modern technology and more on changing behaviors.

The district partnered with a group called Energy Education out of Texas, because it didn’t have any capital dollars to make physical facility improvements. So instead, officials were advised to keep temperatures between 68 and 72 degrees in the winter and 72 to 78 degrees in the warmer months. Then, when people aren’t in the buildings, the systems can be programmed to come on rarely, if ever.

“We have big, big savings on unoccupied buildings,” said Lewis.

Even the simple act of turning off computers can save a lot of money. If Fairfield left every computer running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that would mean an extra $60,000 to $70,000 spent.

Since the district is saving money, however, “it goes back to the general fund and pays for other things,” Lewis said. That’s partly how the district was able to stave off putting a levy on the ballot between 2004 and this year, he added.

Even if districts don’t have a plan in place just yet, there are some in the offing.

Lebanon City Schools aims to reduce costs by replacing older equipment with more efficient equipment and is similar to conservation programs people use in their own homes, according to a mailing recently sent to district residents.

For example, just as a homeowner might replace a wooden, single-pane window with a vinyl double-paned window, Lebanon plans to replace one of its boilers with a more energy-efficient model.

That boiler is in Donovan Elementary School and is as old as the building itself, which dates back to 1994, said Superintendent Mark North.

“Most of that (work) has to be done … the boiler in Donovan was there when the building was built. It’s worn out,” he said.

Over the next 14 years, the district estimates it will save more than $90,000 annually.

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2836 or eric.robinette@coxinc.com.

West Chester Hospital is the only hospital in Ohio which received this distinction in 2011, and is one of only 100 hospitals nationwide to achieve this remarkable designation over the last ten years.

About Energy Star Certification

To qualify for ENERGY STAR certification, a building must perform in the top 25 percent of similar facilities nationwide for energy efficiency and meet strict energy efficiency performance levels set by the EPA. Commercial buildings that earn ENERGY STAR certification use an average of 35 percent less energy than traditional structures and also release 35 percent less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Essentially, this distinction confirms that West Chester Hospital has a smaller carbon footprint than vast majority of hospitals currently operating in the United States.

IES Partners with UC Health

As a part of our relationship with UC Health, West Chester Hospital was built to be “green,” with energy-efficient electrical and mechanical equipment, such as tankless water heaters and automated lighting controls that turn lights off when areas of the hospital are unoccupied. Using IES installed and maintained building controls they are able to manage advanced heating and cooling systems continually adjust themselves to account for seasonal and other weather temperature variations – thus saving countless dollars and significantly reducing their energy consumption rates.

Mike Kuechenmeister, director of plant operations and maintenance, has worked energetically to help West Chester Hospital earn the ENERGY STAR certification. In additional to continually fine tuning the energy and mechanical systems within the hospital for maximum efficiency, Mike tracked and submitted the hospital’s utility bills to the EPA and ushered the hospital through a stringent validation survey, which assessed how efficiently the building uses energy relative to similar buildings nationwide.

We would like to congratulate Mike and the plant operations and maintenance department at UC Health – West Chester Hospital for their hard work to achieve this distinction.

Yet even after energy efficient lighting, solar photovoltaic systems, passive heating and other sustainable technology and design elements have been integrated into green building projects, these projects still need to draw electricity from the power grid. And the power they draw is primarily generated through the combustion of fossil fuels, which results in the release of greenhouse gases. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. buildings are responsible for 39 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.

You may be unaware that the IT industry and it’s data centers and servers consume energy to both power and cool the technologies that make our lives and businesses run smoothly each day. At present, between 3 and 4 percent of all electricity (and the associated carbon emissions) used in the world goes to running data centers.

Innovative Energy Solutions is doing it’s part to reduce overall carbon emissions and build on our national power generation capabilities by hosting our website and its data on servers in a data center that has secured the Renewable Energy Credits* (RECs) necessary to mitigate the environmental impact of the data centers’ energy use. For those data center functions that use natural gas, steam or fuel oil onsite, our web design company has assured us that the hosting facility has secured carbon credits that provide a 130% offset to balance out greenhouse gas emissions associated with obtaining energy from fossil fuel sources of energy.

Innovative Energy Solutions’ staff has helped dozens of School Building in Ohio and Kentucky achieve and receive “Energy Star” ratings for their buildings through improved energy efficiency. With Innovative Energy Solutions’ Energy Management Services, our professionals have been able to ensure that not only are the technologies and design elements used in their projects green, but that their projects’ electricity usage is green as well.

*Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) are tradeable credits representing all the environmental benefits of 1 megawatt hour of renewable energy. The web hosting company has purchased the credits that basically pays a U.S. windfarm to generate renewable energy on behalf of the hosting company. For every REC purchased by the hosting provider, that windfarm generates 1 megawatt of wind power and puts it into the grid. When the hosting provider draws power from the grid, it can then claim credit for that wind power generated on its behalf.

According to a new report from Pike Research, building energy management systems (BEMS) sector revenue in the United States will increase from $900 million in 2010 to $2.4 billion annually by 2016, under an average forecast scenario.

The BEMS market, a growing segment of the larger building-efficiency industry, is quickly gaining momentum as an effective means for end-users to implement energy-efficiency applications in commercial buildings. Such solutions range from reactive energy efficiency optimization software to predictive supply and demand side energy management architectures.

“Commercial building efficiency in general, and the building energy management systems market more specifically, are emerging as hot growth areas due to the strong return on investment that such deployments can bring to building owners and managers,” said research analyst Jevan Fox. “Most of the industry focus is on larger buildings today, but over the next few years, vendors who can provide an attractive ROI to buildings smaller than 200,000 square feet will reap large benefits.”

Fox adds that the BEMS market represents a convergence point for IT vendors, smart grid companies, utilities, building management system (BMS) vendors, curtailment service providers, and other energy-efficiency companies. As a result of this market convergence, BEMS offerings will become more sophisticated, providing energy savings to the end-user that in many cases will be reinvested in additional energy-efficiency applications.

Pike Research’s analysis indicates that the healthcare, university, and commercial office space vertical markets are the most important three segments for the growing BEMS business. Over the next few years, many decision-makers in these markets will choose BEMS rather than updating a legacy BMS, given the cost advantages and versatility of working with multiple technologies.

From Environmental Protection Online