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Projects Updates for key objective: 2.3 Strengthen Centralized Conservation Plan

  1. Lighting Retrofits are important - article in Popular Science

    “Incandescent bulbs use more energy and produce more heat due to their engineering designs,” says Paul Foote, energy efficiency and conservation specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It’s important to shift to more energy-efficient alternatives to reduce the environmental impacts of incandescent bulbs from the utilization of fossil fuels for electricity, he added.

    By mandating a minimum light output or lumens per watt, manufacturers make sure all bulbs can effectively light up a room, which ensures that consumers will avoid overusing energy with substandard bulbs to get the same level of brightness, says Foote. “When upgrading from incandescent bulbs to LEDs, we have noticed a 60 percent decrease in energy consumption on average, and therefore energy cost avoidance has reduced our utility bill by similar amounts for lighting,” he adds.

    <--break->Popular Science interviewed Paul Foote at F&S as part of their article about the importance of lighting retrofits. the full article is available online at https://www.popsci.com/environment/light-bulbs-sustainability-energy/. 

     

     

     

  2. Energy iCAP Team February Meeting

    The Energy iCAP team met on Wednesday, 2./24/2022 at 9:00 A.M. on Zoom to discuss the following topics:

    • CO2 District Heating and Cooling Research Update
    • Requisitioning data on current energy and square footage
    • Upcoming energy webinars.

    More details in the attached file.

    Attached Files: 
  3. Energy iCAP Team Meeting Minutes from 1-21-21

    The Energy iCAP Team had their first meeting of the Spring semester on January 21st, 2021. The meeting focused on obtaining supporting materials for a recommendation to start the Comprehensive Energy Plan, which will serve as an university-wide guide on energy conservation. A recommendation to model buildings for energy code compliance will likely be ready next month. Future discussions are planned with F&S representatives. A subcommittee of Energy team members will brainstorm concrete actions on energy efficiency in labs and residence halls. The agenda and meeting minutes are attached. 

  4. Revolving Loan Fund: FY2020 Project Selection Results

    7 projects were approved during the FY2020 Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) project selection. At this time, final scoring results were determined as well. F&S will be beginning these projects soon and will start assessing their correlated utility savings.

    Due to COVID-19, the voting process was conducted via email as opposed to meeting in person. As a result of the success in the virtual voting process, future selections are planned to occur in a similar fashion.

  5. EMC^2 Proposal, F&S Steam Reduction, Virtualization

    Staff further developed the Energy Management and Control Center (EMC^2) proposal for Chancellor Wise to share with potential donors/partners.  This process included preliminary documentation of the existing energy distribution and tracking computer programs.

    F&S staff started discussions about a steam reduction project at the Main Library, which includes repairing steam traps, replacing Pressure Reducing Valves (PRV), and repairing or replacing other valves.

    F&S is moving towards virtualization for their IT servers.  That will let F&S move to a single server, which will reduce the cooling load and energy demand.  This project can be replicated in other departments for additional energy savings.