CONNOR HOFFMAN
Staff Writer
Fredonia and 11 other SUNY campuses have recently been awarded grants from the New York Power Authority (NYPA) as a result of their stellar energy conservation efforts.
BuildSmart NY is an initiative that Governor Andrew Cuomo started when he issued executive order 88 in 2012. The main goal of this initiative is to reduce state agency energy use by 20 percent by 2020. BuildSmart NY has allowed the state to award money through the Operation Maintenance Acceleration Program (OMAP).
“The OMAP idea was kind of to provide some money for more of like retro-commission and maintenance,” said Eric Mazzone, energy manager in the SUNY system’s Office for Capital Facilities. “As we’re moving forward, there’s always a limited ability of everything, and there’s also a lot of inefficiencies on the grid, and so we want to optimize that the best we possibly can.”
The program tried to get projects that were not just campuses replacing the light bulbs but serious projects that would conserve energy.
“In talking with some of the folks, they were afraid they were going to get all LED lighting retrofits,” said Kevin Cloos, the director of Facilities Services. “I think they wanted something that was a little more exciting than just changing out light bulbs.”
Fredonia recently has been trying to make its energy systems more efficient, and this helped the school stand out in the application process.
NYPA gave Fredonia $355,000 in awards.
The main projects include a heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) retrocommissioning project, a preventive maintenance project, LED lighting and a filter replacement program.
The HVAC retrocommissioning will be done to 22 of Fredonia’s larger buildings including the residence halls. The reason that this is not being done to all of the buildings is because Fredonia has plans to remodel other buildings, like their plan to remodel Houghton Hall.
This project will cost a total of $380,500, and the remainder of the money not covered by the grant money will come from Fredonia’s critical maintenance fund.
“This is to really make sure the programming is all installed properly, the systems out on campus are communicating properly, and then it could be some fine adjustments,” said Cloos. “A lot of it was installed years and years ago, and it really hasn’t been updated or modified, and this is chance to go back, and now that we’ve been using it for years, let’s tweak it.”
With the ability to fine tune this HVAC system, it will lead to less energy being used and thus lead to savings. Cloos explained that most of the money is going to working with an outside consultant and adjusting our HVAC program to work properly, as well as repairs like pipes.
Another project that has been approved is a preventive maintenance project. This project will cost $75,000.
Preventive maintenance is maintenance that the campus does to buildings so that it can fix something before it becomes a necessity to replace.
“That’s us getting out and looking at the equipment. Changing filters for air flow, changing belts to make sure the equipment if it needs to oiled or lubricated, that all the moving parts are moving efficiently,” said Cloos. “When the equipment is maintained it is operated at a lower cost.”
Also $30,000 will be going to HVAC maintenance and filter changing. This project is looking to hire more independent contractors to help modernize these systems. This will lead to reduced costs and extended asset life.
Cloos said that by making HVAC programing tighter and the program running properly, in 3.1 years it will lead to $125,000 in savings.
Cloos explained just exactly what NYPA was looking for in their application process.
“They were looking to find out energy impact of the project, and that relates back to energy savings the cost effectiveness of the project. The other piece is [to see] if it can be replicated or scaled for other campuses and other buildings. They were looking to see how ready you were to implement the project and how we would measure it,” said Cloos.
Liz Praetorius, the vice president of finance and administration, said that, normally, to estimate the cost of buildings energy use, they would have had to measure the energy use by square footage of the buildings, since not all of the buildings have separate meters. Cloos recently had a survey done by NYPA on what could be done to increase energy efficiency and also the costs of improvements. This data made it much easier for Fredonia to apply quickly for these grants.
Praetorius said that these projects are expected to begin within the next few months and are expected to be finished by 2016.