DAYTON – Both Eaton Community Schools and Twin Valley Community Local Schools partnerned with Waibel Energy Systems, Dayton Power & Light (DP&L) and Southwestern Ohio Educational Purchasing Council (EPC)’s energy savings program On Board.
The program resulted in $1.36 million in savings on energy spending over the last 12 months for 32 participating local school districts. The savings were gained without any of the school districts making capital improvements or installing new equipment as well.
In addition to energy savings, school districts received rebate checks from DP&L. Both Eaton and TVS received these checks during an event held at Aileron on March 1. The amount of each rebate varied depending on the school district size and ultimate savings.
Eaton received over $60,000 from the program while TVS received nearly $6,000.
As explained in a press release, the program works as follows:
The first phase of the program identified school districts that could benefit from On Board. Of the qualifying 78 districts, 32 signed up for Energy Service Agreements (ESA) with Waibel. Participating districts were guaranteed to save the full cost of the agreement in reduced energy spending.
Waibel benchmarked the energy usage of over 300 buildings in those districts over a series of a few months.
In the second phase, school districts implemented building control energy conservation measures recommended by Waibel to reduce energy consumption without adversely affecting comfort in the buildings. Some of these measures included:
• Programming boilers and their pumps correctly; particularly when buildings were not in use and outdoor air temperatures are mild.
• Creating Air Handling Unit (AHU) zones with their own schedule which helped reduce the effective heating or cooling of an area based on occupancy;
• Implementing programming for AHUs that helped reduce fan speed more often – a significant percentage of energy in HVAC equipment
• Leveraging real time energy meters to improve load shedding during nights, weekends, holidays, and snow days.
On average, districts realized 233% of the cost of the program in savings. These results were audited by Heapy Engineering.
“This program provides a great way for school districts to save money,” said Dave Crosley, General Manager of Waibel Energy. “Savings opportunities like this are even more critical today as taxpayers demand that school districts curb costs.”
To learn more about this and other energy savings opportunities go to www.waibelenergysystems.com.
