iSEE seed-funded research project that uses robotics and artificial intelligence to autonomously manage “high tunnel” food production is entering its second year at the University of Illinois Sustainable Student Farm.

May 2024-February 2025 photos of the Florida Orchard Prairie have been added to the box folder.

Things are picking up and to meet demand, we’ll work on getting some more bikes for sale. We did have nice 3 speed Build-a-Bike finished this week. 

Hoped to have a few more bikes done this last week but all of the ones I safety checked failed and then some—damaged wheels/broken components—but such is the plight of repairing old bikes. 

Tonight is the Bike Project Monthly Members Meeting. 

This week is our first Bike Center on the Quad Day. Fingers crossed for good weather and a good turnout!

The numbers:

Visitors: 59
Sales: $328
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $150
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Memberships: 2 for $60
Tires/tubes: 5 for $24
 

Attached is the 2025 Progress Report for the 2014 Campus Bike Plan. 

At this Friday's Illinii Lights Out event! With your help, 3470 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $527.94 in energy costs. This also prevented 5.05 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 568 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a great impact! 

A sustainable transportation initiative supported by iSEE is conducting an on-campus research project on electric vehicle (EV) charging as a part of its overall project plan. This three-part study will help gather direct user data related to EV charging on campus, AC outlets.

Mike Larson, director of utility operations at the Abbott Power Plant described UIUC's Campus Chilled Water System (CCWS) at the 2025 Chief Engineers & Facility Managers Conference. Software and hardware upgrades were made to the CCWS over a 10 year period to optimize its efficiency. OptimumLOOP software analyze and adjust water usage in real time. The project has a contract value of $2,499,000. It guarantees $264,971 annually in energy costs savings.

RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the February 2025 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 2,395.5 Megawatt hours.

The February 2025 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.

We were closed last week for Spring Break. Used the quiet time to crank out a few more bikes. We’re hovering around double digits in the for-sale department. With the final batch of bikes out of the barn, I’ll be able to do an earnest inventory and have my staff sort bikes between For Sale/B-a-Bs. A little clarity in that realm will hopefully elp move bikes along a little quicker.

This week we will resume being open Mon – Fri.

The following numbers are from 3/10 - 3/14:

Visitors: 64
Sales: $1,196.15
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $650
Memberships: 10 for $300
Tires/tubes:  10 for $60.75

This speaker series brings together researchers on campus whose work touches on environmental impacts (e.g., air quality, water quality, weather patterns) on health, to share their current research and to foster discussion and collaboration. This week, professor Warren G Lavey will talk about how "Hospitals Should Help Address Climate Change Through Community Health Needs Assessments."

March 25, 12 pm • Zoom

Center for Health Informatics • IDPH, University of Illinois OSI

CHI Speaker Series Examining Environmental Impacts on Health: Warren Lavey

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Rainwater Management Program showcases a future vision for the campus that emphasizes the importance of rainwater retention and replenishment. The goal is to transition from the traditional viewpoint of stormwater runoff as a maintenance issue to one that envisions rainwater as an asset to preserve, harness and celebrate. Learn more about the program’s release in a virtual forum on from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 2. Preregistration is required to attend the webinar. The RMP was funded by the Student Sustainability Committee.

Learn About the Campus' New Rainwater Management Program

April 2, 3–4 pm

Betsy Richardson • Facilities & Services

Clean Up Campus: Boneyard Creek Community Day 2025

F&S is a proud co-sponsor of Boneyard Creek Community Day 2025 from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 12 (rain date: May 3). The event begins at Scott Park (207 E. Springfield Avenue, Champaign) and includes lunch, music and educational displays. Sign up now at this link. Registration deadline is 5 p.m. April 5, but walk-up, day-of volunteers will also be welcomed.

April 12, 9 am–12 pm • Scott Park

Betsy Richardson • Facilities & Services

Safety and Efficiency in Fume Hood Selection

Laboratory fume hoods are critical in protecting laboratory personnel from chemical exposure; however, fume hoods may also be the largest energy consumers in a research university campus. The Grainger College of Engineering Office of Safety invites campus facilities, safety and laboratory personnel to an in-depth presentation on the latest developments in fume hood technologies, and how to leverage them to create the safest and most energy-efficient laboratories. More details and the registration link can be found at: https://emails.illinois.edu/newsletter/30/871793530.html

March 27, 12–1 pm • 3002 Electrical and Computer Engineering Building

Edward Chainani • Grainger College of Engineering

8 new ChargePoint CT-4000 "Level 2" chargers were installed in Lot E15 when it underwent construction. These chargers have dual ports,  which enables a total of 16 vehicles to be plugged in at the same time.

The Revolving Loan Fund is managed by Facilities & Services (F&S) Utility and Energy Services that calculates cost avoidance from an RLF project using the fully loaded utility rates. The loan will be repaid at a fixed 1% interest rate with an annual payment equal to the calculated annual savings until the loan is fully repaid. When a project is funded by multiple funding sources, the annual savings to be returned to the RLF will be calculated by the payback associated with the work completed by the entire project.

Project Submission and Selection

Potential projects will be solicited from campus units by F&S Utility and Energy Services when there is at least $1M in funds available for allocation. Projects will be submitted through a web​-based PDF form by the requesting campus department. 

Project selection will be handled through the RLF Committee that includes the Executive Director of Facilities and Services, Associate Provost for Capital Planning, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Student Sustainability Committee Chair, Illinois Student Senate President, and a representative of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment. The Committee will meet on a semiannual basis to approve/reject projects. 

Project selection will be based on the following weighted criteria: 

1. Payback Period (30%)
   Project has a short payback period.
2. Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (25%) 
   Does this project reduce greenhouse gas emissions for campus?
3. Revolving Loan Fund Size Impact (20%)
   Projects that increase the Revolving Loan Fund size through grants or additional allocations.
4. Visibility (5%)
   How visible/noticeable is the project to users of the facility, space and/or campus community?
5. Project Coordination (20%)
   Projects that can be executed in conjunction with other planned or ongoing projects. The intent of the coordination is to make the RLF project more efficient to deliver for the University and/or departments.

Project Tracking 
Revolving Loan Fund projects are tracked using the Green Revolving Investment Tracking System (GRITS). This interactive system tracks annual energy, financial, and carbon savings from energy efficiency and other resource conservation measures.  ​

Agenda

• Michael's updates
  • Expand/Collapse buttons added to Project Updates listings. See examples:
    • All Project Updates
    • Project Updates search results
    • Project Updates for collection: Monarch Butterfly projects
    • Projects Updates for Sustainability iCAP Portal
    • Projects Updates for key objective: 2.1 Energy Planning Document
    • Projects Updates for theme: Education
    • Projects Updates for place: Campus Instructional Facility
  • Investigating an issue with some information connected to Projects (locations, funding info) and Metrics (targets, tracking) losing their connections to those projects.
    • Information still in database, so I can restore connections, but it's been taking some careful and tedious effort to track this down and restore the connections.
    • I've been practicing on a test site to make sure I get it right. Will fix connections on live site soon.
    • Does not appear widespread, though unclear what the pattern is at this time
• [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Google Analytics numbers drop
  • Steeper than others have experienced
  • Probably some combination of less traffic and old analytics possibly not excluding bots/crawlers as effectively
• [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)

Discussion

• [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Google Analytics numbers drop
• [DEFER TO NEXT TIME] Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics

TODOs

• Investigate how to hide Project Status from certain projects which aren't actually projects - they're meant to act as parents for other projects
  • e.g. add a "Header" Project Status which hides the status
  • Remove Project Status from hierarchical listing on theme pages and full project hierarchy listing
• Archived projects:
  • Add link to Archived Projects on Projects page
  • Hide archived projects from Theme page hierarchical listings
  • Leave archived projects from Project Family sidebar section, for now - may revisit that decision in the future

Willard Airport Director, Tim Bannon, and F&S Associate Director for Sustainability, Morgan White, discussed the potential for solar at Willard Airport.  Tim identified approximately 100 acres available for solar.