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In order to reach the iCAP objective of 25,000 MWh/year of solar energy by FY25, additional panels will need to be installed. Large scale, ground mounted panels appear to be the least expensive route towards achieving the FY25 objective.
Dear Stacey, Morgan, and Prasad,
The CEE research team (including Shelly, Weichen, Ruifeng, and I) has held two weekly meetings and discussed our ongoing project. Below is a summary of the ongoing efforts:
As for the next step, we wonder if there is a good time to schedule a quick interview with you, and/or the stakeholders you mentioned last time? The purpose is to understand the design options and restrictions (i.e., types of barriers, guideways, and/or booth-location choices).
Thank you.
Yanfeng
All, Happy March! Looks like it’s coming in like a lamb for a change.
Still slow around here as far as visitors are concerned. On Friday of last week we got 7 bikes donated, all of which will be junked or passed along to Salt & Light (3 kids’ bikes). That’ll give the student staff something easy to do this week. Elsewhere: Our grinder wheel bit the dust so we’ll be all analog on filing housing and cleaning parts until that is replaced. Less electricity use = more sustainable!
This week I’ve got an interview for a student worker, our Fix-a-Flat class on Thursday and on I’ll be setting up some of my staff to have key-access when I’m away.
The numbers:
Visitors: 45
Sales: $132
Membership: 1 for $30
Tires/tubes: 4 for $49
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Good morning Morgan,
I have gathered the numbers that correspond to an acre of solar cover.
The estimate is that an acre of solar canopy could generate 760,536 kWh annually (this estimate takes into account the weather patterns of our location and possible shading/system inefficiencies).
I remember you saying that right now the University pays $0.05 per kWh. Our solar farms are charged $0.045 per kWh that they generate. This means that $0.005 is saved for every kWh generated. That can be used to estimate that an acre of solar canopy would save roughly $3,800 per year.
I thought that I would also include the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s estimate for what a solar retailer would charge per kWh of electricity in our area: $0.036. This would mean that $0.014 could be saved per kWh on a solar canopy system, or roughly $10,650 per acre.
Let me know what else I can find,
Ryan Day
The meeting minutes from the Resilience Team's meeting on 2/28/2020 is attached.
Abby Culloton, a freshman in Civil and Environmental Engineering, put together a project proposal for the SmartWay program and presented it on February 28th. This proposal included why being an affiliate of this program would be beneficial to campus, who/ what departments across campus would be involved, proposed objectives, and other facts that needed to be considered.
Attached is the full proposal.
East Central Illinois Master Naturalists just formed a Pollinator Taskforce. They are focused on getting more pollinator plants into the community and planning programs associated with pollinators and pollinator plants.
The Extension team created some wonderful handouts that have native plant suggestions for 5 types of habitat. We have been handing those out like crazy. PDFs can be found at (https://extension.illinois.edu/cfiv/pollinator-pockets).
We have the pollinator pocket program (see link above)
Educational Programs held (just ECIMN, does not include programs organized by master gardener programs):
March 18, 2019 – Making Pollinator Habitat Work on the Modern Landscape
May 16, 2019 – Wildflowers
July 15, 2019 – Champaign Prairie Areas
July 22, 2019 – Buzz on Native Bees
August 19, 2019 – Illinois Monarch Project
January 27, 2020 – Native Plants in the Landscape
They just had a table at the Mudpuppy festival and had information on pollinators for children
The Master Gardener program in Vermilion County is mostly organic (unless something crazy happens). The Master Gardeners in Champaign put in a native pollinator garden last year at the IDEA garden on campus.
In the training for MG and MN we talk about pollinators, native plants, and pest management.
I am on the team that did the Retrocommissioning project in 2018 and I would be happy to share some of our knowledge from that process. Below is the link to a presentation of that project that we took to a Big Ten energy conference. Some of our main takeaways are that the combination of chilled beams, dual HX wheels, coil sizing, occupancy ventilation, and thoughtful building pressurization have led to one of the most efficient buildings on campus. Also, the heat pumps work well to heat/cool with electricity, but would be optimal if there were more of a reheat load, or a hot water loop to send reject heat to a neighboring building in summer, which campus is looking into in certain locations.
https://www.fs.illinois.edu/services/utilities-energy/energy-conservation/rcx-energy-results
Andy Robinson, LEED-AP, CEM
DDC Specialist, F&S Energy Services - RCx
All, I only worked Monday and Tuesday last week as I had a family emergency out of town. Those two days were slow. I picked up some bikes from the warehouse to keep everyone busy. Those bikes are coming along.
This week is business as usual. I’ll look to reschedule some of the meetings I missed in my absence, pick up a couple more bikes, and box some more stuff up for our move.
The numbers:
Visitors: 27
Sales: $106
Membership: 1 for $30
Tires/tubes: 4 for $23
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Hello everyone,
I am happy to report that our Dump and Run site visit last Wednesday was successful! We will be using the Truck Bay at F&S for this year’s collection space, thanks to Dr. Attalla, Dave Boehm, and Pete Varney. The address is 1501 S. Oak Street, and Mike Doyle and Marc Alexander said it will serve the collection space needs very well. Additionally, the Zero Waste Coordinator at F&S, Shantanu Pai, will take on an active role for Dump and Run this year.
Our vision is to transition Dump and Run from a “YMCA-run event that campus helps” to a “campus-run event that the YMCA helps.” Certainly this will take time (more than one year) and there are many details to work out, so please remember that the collaboration for this overall program will only be strengthened by this shift. Shantanu, Marc, and I are meeting this Wednesday, and we will provide a more detailed status update at the next team meeting on March 10.
If you have any questions or suggestions in the meantime, please let me know. Thanks again for all the thought and consideration that this group has put in to this program and finding workable solutions. I’m very excited for the future of Dump and Run!
Sincerely,
Morgan
This week (2/10 - 2/14) I distributed the letter to the offices in the NRSC to inform them of this composting project. We hope to collect the names and contact information in order to conduct a training and inventory how many supplies are needed. I also continued working on the composting guide for future projects.
Meredith Moore also met with Shantanu Pai, Zero Waste Coordinator, to discuss formalizing our procedures for other campus entities interested in starting composting projects.
All, Business as usual last week. The Scottish dude finished his build-a-bike. He only came in, too, because his German friend did a B-a-B as well and talked it up. Nothing beats good word of mouth. He was positively giddy about the whole thing and never got discouraged or frustrated by the process. The highlight for me was bending back a canti brake boss using the hole in the end of a crescent wrench. It’s not perfect but it’s functional enough. That’d make a good motto for us.
I’ll head to the warehouse this week to grab a few more bikes. I’ll also schedule a couple training sessions with my staff to refresh on some repair basics .
The numbers:
Sales: $428.50
Bike (refurb): 1 for $180
Bike (B-a-B): 1 for $30
Memberships: 3 for $90
Tires/tubes: 4 for $17
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Please see attached the meeting minutes from the kickoff meeting for this project.
Attended by: Yanfeng Ouyang, Shelly Zhang, Morgan White, Stacey DeLorenzo, Sarthak Prasad, Weichen Li, Rui Feng She.
Attached are the meeting minutes from the iWG meeting on 2/17/2020. This meeting focused on discussing the resilience objectives.
The next Kent Seminar is set for Thursday, Feb. 13, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at the Illinois Center for Transportation, 1611 Titan Dr., Rantoul. Eleftheria Kontou will present “Data-driven modeling of electric vehicle charging pricing and worth.” Pizza and soft drinks will be provided at noon. You can also watch the seminar live via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6ukx7meG90
1611 Titan Drive Rantoul, IL 61866
Noelle Arbulu • Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Join us for this seminar sponsored by local Master Naturalists. Scott R. Tess, the Sustainability & Resilience Officer for Urbana, will discuss City programming designed to develop local solar energy resources. Solar Urbana-Champaign is an ongoing program intended to both simplify the process and reduce the costs of purchasing and installing solar photovoltaic systems for homes and businesses.
February 17, 6:30–8 pm • U of I Extension, 801 Country Fair Dr. Champaign, IL 61821
Amanda Christenson • Cooperative Extension Service
There was a Dump & Run meeting on 2-11-2020.
The meeting agenda is attached below.
All, Really slow last week as the weather got rainy and snowy—sure fire ways to keep people off their bikes. Although a nice Scottish gentleman studying here came by to claim one of the remaining bikes as a B-a-B. He repeatedly mentioned wishing there was something like this back home in Scotland, so we’re basically cooler than Scotland.
We had our first Fix-a-Flat class on Friday but that was a no-show, sadly.
I picked up some bikes from the warehouse to keep my staff busy while we wait for the real moving to commence. We’ve built up just about every bike in the shop, save some old 3 speeds. A good amount of inventory has been boxed up and moved to the Urbana shop or stored here for use at our new space.
This week I’ll be meeting with marketing and IT folks to discuss how the new bike center will look from those respective areas.
The numbers:
Visitors: 46
Sales: $261
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Memberships: 3 for $90
Tires/tubes: 4 for $26
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Hi Meredith,
Here's my update for this week:
This week I started to write a general guide on composting best practices and the implementation process for on-campus offices/departments to start a small-scale composting program similar to our own.
Next week, we will begin distributing the outreach letter informing the NSRC units of this initiative. The units in this building are being asked to contact me so we can start training the offices and so we know how many receptacles to purchase.
Hope you have a great rest of the week!
Theresa
