Reduce Your School’s “Plug Loads” To Save Energy by Ken Sheinkopf
School administrators and facility managers are usually surprised to find out the huge impact of small energy-users in their school. The many plug loads typically found in today’s school buildings can add up to big energy-users.
Some energy audits and studies have found that as much as 13 to 25 percent of the total electric energy used in a school might come from electrical items that aren’t always used and are not always needed, and in many cases don’t even belong in the classroom in the first place.
Sure, there are many electronic products that have become essential in today’s classrooms, like computers, LCD projectors, printers, scanners, copiers, telephone systems and other things, but energy audits of schools typically find a huge number of plug loads that aren’t really essential but are having an impact on the school’s overall energy use.
It’s pretty common to find many personal appliances or devices brought into schools by teachers, administrators and support personnel that are not directly related to any type of learning activity but which use a great deal of electricity. School audits have found small refrigerators, microwave ovens, radios, space heaters, coffee makers and many other types of products, including popcorn poppers and cappuccino machines, plugged into outlets in classrooms. What makes this situation even worse is that many of these products are even duplicated in the teacher lunchroom, workroom or other places in the school. Totaling up the electricity use of these personal items would shock most administrators and facility managers.
Since teachers and staff have come to reply on having these products in their workplace, totally eliminating them from the building would certainly cause morale problems. One suggestion for handling this problem is to prepare a personal appliance policy that would let teachers and staff know exactly what types of appliances are allowed in the classrooms, and it should include recommendations to use efficient ENERGY STAR appliances as well as compact fluorescent light bulbs for task lighting. A step beyond this has been initiated by a number of schools around the country – they have set up a fee schedule to cover the electricity of personal items used by teachers and staff.
Many schools have introduced policies on personal appliances and equipment by first raising the energy awareness of their faculty, staff and students, pointing out that what they do in terms of using energy has a direct impact on the bill the school pays. It’s been said that schools do not operate themselves, so teaching the people who affect the energy bill is a key step in reducing energy costs and saving money.
Simple Lighting Changes Can Save Big Dollars on Energy Bills
If you’re looking for ways to reduce energy usage in your school, one of the best and easiest strategies is to wisely use the lights in the classrooms, offices, storage areas and hallways.
Though you might first think that meaningful energy-savings can only come from big-ticket building improvements like boiler and chiller upgrades or all new lighting systems, you’ll be surprised to learn that you can substantially lower your energy bill by simple controls on lights, light levels, proper placement of light switches in the classrooms, and using only the energy-consuming products and appliances that you really need.
If you’re in charge of managing a private or independent school building, you know how energy costs have risen significantly in recent years, and it looks very likely that you can expect to pay considerably more for heating this winter. While school administrators usually cringe at the thought of saving big dollars by making expensive building improvements, it’s important that you know that you can instead make small changes that can still return impressive dividends.
Take a walk around your school and you might be very surprised at the number of lights turned on during the day that really aren’t needed. Energy audits of schools often find situations where lights are kept on all the time in storage rooms or in closets used by faculty, administrators or custodial staff, or in mechanical or electrical rooms that are used infrequently. Installing simple occupancy sensor light switches could make light available when needed but assure that it is turned off otherwise. It’s fairly easy and inexpensive to take an energy-efficiency step like replacing an existing light switch with a sensor and using the existing electrical box. Set the switch to turn on when someone enters the room and to turn off anywhere from 15 seconds to 15 minutes after they leave. These switches typically cost as little as $25, and their savings will usually repay this expense in less than 24 months.
You can achieve even more dramatic savings by controlling hallway lights, which can account for as much as 15 to 20 percent of a school’s total electric lighting use. It’s not uncommon for schools to have hallway lights turned on for 12 to 18 hours a day or even all the time, yet these lights might really only be needed for two or three hours a day. Installing some basic motion sensors on the lights not on a 24/7 circuit – maybe on every third or fourth fixture in a hallway -- can turn them on and off when they’re needed and make a huge dent in their energy costs.
I recently read a report on an audit of a middle school in northern Illinois that had an electric bill for the past year of $214,000 (about $1.73 per square foot). National research on school buildings around the U.S. estimates that the average school energy bill is around $1 to $1.10 a square foot, so this school was spending considerably more than it should be. One of the findings of the energy audit was a total lack of lighting controls. Their hallways and classrooms were considerably overlit, in some areas by as much as 50 percent more than needed. Assuming that 40 percent of that total bill was for lighting, then a good lighting retrofit could save $25,000 or more every single year.
How hard would it be to do this? One energy expert told me that just removing a number of the lamps could be enough to provide enough light without spending any money at all on new products or other changes. Fixtures that now have four T-12 lamps can be replaced with two to three lamp T-8 fixtures and still have the proper light levels. They could also take out some lamps, replace their T-12s with T-8s, and use the money they’re saving for things they really need.
Too often, school facility managers and other administrators think of big equipment changes when looking at their energy bills, while small steps like controlling lighting can give them rewards that are just as big. Take a look at the lighting in your school and think about opportunities for lowering your energy bills.
Ken Sheinkopf is GSA Technical Resources Director and author of Energy Saving Tips For Schools, a monthly GSA column for school facility managers and administrators. Ken is also Vice President of The Sheinkopf Group, a national energy education consulting firm and directed the Public Affairs Division of the Florida Solar Energy Center from 1983 – 2007.
