A good colleague and friend of mine frequently points me to interesting energy stories, and so far he hasn’t steered me wrong. He lives in coal country, and works on promoting smart energy efficiency and renewables. Some people might think that would make him a voice crying in the wilderness, but if so, the echoes are getting louder.
He recently suggested I look at the University of Cincinnati (UC), where they have made huge strides in managing their energy costs, while integrating much of what they are doing into the curriculum, thereby enriching the lives of students there.
Recent investments the school has made in this area include the measures one commonly sees, such as lighting upgrades, digital direct controls (to monitor and automate various processes), installation of variable speed drives on motors (to match the speed of the motor to the task at hand), and insulation. They have also focused on the smaller but cost-effective measures, such as installing Vending Miser devices on all of the campus soda machines.
The institution has also taken on the larger, more complex and often capital-intensive projects. These include:
1) construction of a 50 megawatt (MW) cogeneration plant,
2) installation of a water-to-water heat pump,
3) installation of both a 2.8 million gallon and 4.0 million gallon thermal storage system,
4) building a large substation to reduce electricity prices,
5) reducing overall steam load that allowed for elimination of a boiler,
6) changing the fuel source for another boiler from coal to paper pellets.
I had a chance this month to speak to Joe Harrell, Assistant VP of Utilities, about the philosophy employed in the University’s proactive and aggressive approach to managing its energy spend, the challenges involved, and the effort to involve students in the process.
Harrell noted that UC is not a newcomer to the area of energy management, and has been focused on this issue for many years. He also made it clear that the University adopts the long view with respect to the economics of its projects. While most projects may have three to five year payback periods on investments, some of the larger undertakings may go out six or seven years, but they may also provide additional benefits such as increased reliability or avoided future capital costs. Harrell indicated the University saves about nine million dollars a year, five million in direct energy savings, and four million in other avoided energy-related costs.
Harrell was quick to point out that, while technology has a role to play, changing behavior is a critical part of the equation for success. On the consumer side of the equation, the school sponsors energy competitions between student housing units and engages custodians to encourage students to turn off their lights, remove space heaters, and close fume hood sashes. With respect to the energy management technologies themselves, Harrell noted that there is a critical human element there as well.
Technology is not the answer to everything. You can put in the best technology device in the world, but as soon as it’s not working, if the operator puts it in manual bypass, then it's providing no benefit. Likewise, if you don’t train your personnel how to operate the new technology, and you don’t invest in your personnel to know how to run it, the new technology is pointless.
Harrell works in a complex environment, with about 100 buildings, and a $30 million energy spend, on steam, chilled water, and electricity. Including the hospital and all auxiliary services, the annual budget is close to $65 million. He also coordinates with a host of other departments, including Facilities, Planning Design & Construction, Environmental Health & Safety, Campus Services, Public Safety, and many Academic departments. In order to optimize energy investments, a lot of people have to be involved. Over recent years, great strides have been made in coordination. Harrell observed that the siloed approach is generally a thing of the past, and collaboration is now the norm. Ironically, financial pressures were partly responsible for this close coordination.
As budget cuts have forced us to become leaner, we have to work smarter which requires us to work together. Many departments have been involved in these projects, including people from all areas of the University who know that saving energy is important and will regularly present ideas to administration instead of ignoring problems and thinking that it is somebody else’s responsibility.
The interdisciplinary element is crucial to overall success. Harrell provided an example of how that works.
We borrowed $30 million. I borrowed it as the utility guy – I then transferred the funds to planning design and construction personnel who implement, and work with our facilities management personnel to prioritize which buildings to work on. As buildings are getting rehabbed or upgraded, we incorporate efficiency measures during the upgrade. We fix the building and do the efficiency at the same time. We already have 2014 and 2015 money allocated to specific projects…We meet quarterly to discuss these types of projects, and all the teams work together. The Utilities Department produces the energy but we don’t manage buildings so we have to rely on our partners in Facilities Management…The Utilities Department debt service has gone up, but we have been able to keep the University’s energy costs from increasing because we are consuming less energy .
At the end of the day, the energy spend is about the kilowatt-hour cost AND the number of kilowatt-hours consumed, which is why the focus on efficiency is so intense.
I work directly for our CFO. He doesn’t know if it’s five cents per kilowatt-hour or fifteen cents. He knows and cares about the total budget and cost of utilities. We have kept that flat for eight years and expect that to stay relatively flat for another five to eight. Meanwhile, student enrollment is up 20-30% and we have added a large wet lab, and a recreation center.
Harrell commented that metering is important, since you have to know where, when, and how you are using your energy. However, it is important to focus not only on your kWh reduction, but to look at the context of what is driving your overall costs. In Cincinnati, for example, UC is part of the PJM (mid-Atlantic) power pool. That means they get charged capacity costs for five peak capacity (CP) days. The amount charged is based on each customer’s contribution at the moment that the system peak is reached during each of five peak demand days.
Harrell and his team look at the industry forecasts and take action accordingly, deploying a number of on-campus resources.
If PJM hits one of the five CP, I can drive demand to zero. We operate gas chillers, our two thermal storage units, and we are cranking up our generators. We also have diesels where we are exporting power to the grid on those days.
The 2.8 and 4.0 million thermal storage units help manage costs every day as well, by using cheaper off-peak night-time power to chill water which is used for air conditioning during the day. The story behind the larger unit showcases the value of combining serendipity and systems thinking. Recently, UC was building a new practice field for the football team that required moving tons of earth and construction of a retaining wall. Somebody had a brilliant idea.
When we were building, an engineer in Planning Design and Construction said ‘We can put water behind that wall instead of dirt.’ I said ‘Yeah, we could.’ If you look at where the practice field is, we now have a 4.0 million gallon storage facility under the practice field. It was a one-time opportunity…we don’t need new chillers with refrigerants. It is a bunch of cement with pipes, no moving parts, and it will be here when I am dead and gone. It reduces peak demand, which could be 40-50% of the overall bill.
Perhaps the effort Harrell is most pleased about is the initiative to address the school’s two coal-fired boilers.
We have an awesome cogen plant, but we also had two coal-fired boilers. One is used for peaking…This boiler is in the worst spot, connected to a hospital and next to the Center for Advanced Research Excellence. You have doctors and nurses in white uniforms on the sidewalk next to where we drive our coal trucks. It would have cost $4.5 million to retrofit our oldest boiler. We thought, ‘Why spend money on this dinosaur?’ Getting another boiler wasn’t best for anybody either. Reducing steam load made more sense. We were doing projects looking at our laboratories to see if we could reduce the amount of ventilation from 10-15 air changes per hour, whether research was taking place or not. Every time we exchange the air, we have to heat or cool it. Now we have four changes per hour when the labs are unoccupied and eight when they are occupied. Our planning department had to work with environmental health and safety, as well as the researchers and academics to make sure it was safe. That change reduced the steam load by the amount that was produced by the smaller boiler. My boiler operators are cutting that boiler up today.
Then, Harrell indicated, they looked to see what they could do with the bigger unit.
That took care of the smaller boiler. The other one has new combustion controls, a solid state variable speed drive, and state of the art feeders. So for that one, we are cleaning up the front end. We are partnering with Greenwood Energy in Wisconsin. They make wastepaper pellets from materials that cannot be recycled…They shred and compress and pelletize it. The pellets are about the size of coal, move better than coal and burn with high a BTU value – they look to the boiler a lot like coal.
The only significant emissions-related issue was that some chlorine was released. To address that, Harrell and team relied on UC’s environmental studies and engineering students.
We said to the environmental studies students ‘help us find sources locally to make these pellets.’ They found sources...We are now working on a patent with the College of Engineering for additives to put in the pellet to bond with chlorine. We are working with Greenwood where we will patent this technology and the University could get some royalties. Greenwood will build a plant in Cincinnati to serve our needs and those of their other customers. The pellets will actually be better for the environment than natural gas – if they throw all the waste into a landfill it decomposes and becomes methane.
What about other renewables? Harrell observed that solar and wind are not great resources in Ohio, and provide far less energy per dollar spent than additional investments in efficiency.
Instead of wind and solar, we have invested our money in using less. Lets spend that money there, instead of putting large scale solar that will cost millions…instead, lets go spend money on our campus reducing pumping horesepower. It's not sexy, but it has a six-year payback. We are going to be here for 30, 40, hopefully another 100 or more years. To me it makes sense to invest in our infrastructure and our buildings.
So the multi-year, multi-disciplinary effort continues to get ever more bang from the energy buck. The effort continues to engage the students as well. Harrell is excited about the educational and research opportunities his projects can bring to UC students, and he is appreciative of what they in turn bring to the table.
We engage regularly with students. We have worked with students in our College of Engineering, Environmental Studies, and Department of Art Architecture and Planning, plus students from our College of Business and EMedia Students in the College of Conservatory of Music. We support students doing research to make biodiesel, or to make thermal storage better. We are trying to get as many students involved and learn from what we do. One of the students came here set on doing chip design, and then took an energy management class and said ‘I want to do this. This is awesome. I want a career in energy management.’
