BMC EMERGES AS A LEADER IN ENERGY CONSERVATION

Over the last several years, mounting energy prices have had an inevitable effect on Bryn Mawr's pocketbook, but the Facilities Services Department has made an extraordinary effort to insulate the College against the buffeting of a volatile energy market. As a result of a long-term campaign to reduce energy consumption, the College has become a leader among its peers in energy conservation.

Facilities Services Director Glenn Smith tapped Project Manager Jim McGaffin, a mechanical engineer, to spearhead the College's efforts to save energy. Facilities embarked on an intensive program of conservation, Smith says, about seven years ago.

McGaffin and Smith began by identifying the campus's largest energy consumers and then assigning high priority to technological improvements that allowed those buildings to operate more efficiently. The plan paid off: a recent benchmarking survey showed that Bryn Mawr's energy consumption, measured in BTUs per gross square foot, is significantly lower than that of comparable institutions. The average mark was 137,147 BTU/GSF; Bryn Mawr's figure was just 88,494.

McGaffin stresses that the College's policy is to pursue conservation through technology, not to impose hardship or discomfort on students and workers. He notes, for instance, that with the completion of several recent renovations, the amount of air-conditioned square footage on campus has actually increased by about 15 percent — but electricity consumption overall has increased by only about two percent.

How Did They Do it?

"There's no magic bullet," McGaffin says. "There's no one thing you can do to drive energy consumption down for good. Our philosophy is to incorporate conservation measures into everything we do. Every time we do work on a building, we look at ways to improve efficiency."

But there were a few measures that Smith describes as "low-hanging fruit":

• Replacing all exit signs with high-efficiency LED signs. This measure, Smith says, paid for itself within a year (part of the savings was in labor, as the new signs eliminated the need to replace bulbs).

• Lighting retrofits. Fixtures that burned 12 kilowatts per hour were replaced by ones that burned eight kilowatts per hour. This effort began with the buildings that have the highest "energy footprints" and are open for the longest hours, including the Bern Schwartz Gymnasium, Canaday Library and the Park Science complex; Smith estimates that about 98 percent of the square footage on campus has been retrofitted in this way now.

• Reducing the number of transformers on campus. The College saves money by buying high-voltage electricity. This power must then be transformed into voltages low enough to flow safely through outlets in offices and dorms. Transformers lose energy through heat, so reducing the number of transformers stanched an energy drain.

• Variable-Frequency Drives. The largest consumers of electricity on campus, McGaffin says, are the exhaust and make-up-air fans used in fume hoods in chemistry labs and ventilated animal-research labs. These fans used to be powered by motors that operated at full speed even when the energy loads required were less than their capacity. The new drives consume only the energy necessary to match the load. VFDs were also installed in many of the pumps used on campus.

• Vehicles powered by compressed natural gas. The Department of Public Safety and Transportation is in the process of replacing its entire fleet with these more-efficient vehicles.

• Burner and boiler replacement. Nine buildings on campus have been fitted with more efficient heat sources.

• Greener buildings. Buildings that have undergone major renovations — Benham Gateway, the Cambrian Row buildings, Dalton and Bettws-y-Coed — conform to high standards of sustainability. "Each of these buildings has a tightly insulated envelope, which allows us to be very energy-efficient and still keep the buildings at comfortable temperatures," says McGaffin.

• A better automated temperature-control system. Bryn Mawr was an early leader in this area, Smith says, but the last system had been installed in the 1970s and required a programmer to operate. The College has now switched to a Windows-based system that is much easier to use, and it has greatly increased the number of temperature sensors in each building. Newly renovated buildings have a sensor in each room. "This accomplishes two goals," McGaffin says. "It helps us prevent energy waste, and it helps us respond more quickly to climate-control problems."

Temperature Control Depends on Community Cooperation

In campus fossil-fuel consumption, which powers primarily heating, the greatest variable remains the weather. While newly renovated buildings with highly insulated envelopes are very efficient, most of the College's historic buildings, including dormitories, have much leakier envelopes, Smith says. It is a challenge to maintain an even temperature in these buildings.

"Our goal is to keep all of the rooms within a temperature range of 68 to 72 degrees," Smith explains. "But in older buildings, it's common to see the temperature rise a degree or two per floor as you ascend, because heat rises. By the time you get to the top floor — in spaces that were originally the attics of these buildings — the difference in temperature can sometimes be pretty striking."

Especially in older buildings, which have fewer temperature sensors per floor, inhabitants can sometimes unknowingly cause temperature-regulation problems.

"If one person on a floor is operating a space heater," McGaffin explains, "and that person's room happens to be where the temperature sensor is located, our system will think that the overall temperature for the whole zone of that sensor is much higher than it really is, and heat will be shut off to that zone. The opposite happens if someone opens a window when it's cold outside — everybody else is sweating, and the problem is compounded."

McGaffin appeals to the campus community to notify Facilities Services of all temperature-regulation problems. Contact information is available at http://www.brynmawr.edu/facilities/service.shtml. Urgent requests (i.e., issues involving personal safety, security or loss of or damage to facilities or property) should be phoned in to Facilities' call center at x7390 between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m.; to make an urgent request after hours, call Public Safety at x7911.

"We'll try to do something immediately," says McGaffin. "We may not be able to — in the end, you may have to resort to a space heater, for instance. But if it's a problem that can't be solved centrally in the short term, we still need to know about it. Open work orders are the basis of the major repairs that we undertake during the summer. Reporting temperature-control problems results in improved energy efficiency and a more comfortable environment for everyone."

"There are ways," Smith notes, "that we can pull together as a community in a collaborative way to be more conscious of the energy we consume. Student activists have done a lot in the way of community education."

"But ultimately," McGaffin concludes, "conservation is a choice. We have the power to make that choice institutionally, but in terms of students' electricity consumption in their own rooms, they have to decide for themselves."

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