The light blue area on the monitor displays the electricity saved per day after the retrofit compared to before. Image courtesy UNBC

Prince George, B.C. _The “Green” university is chalking up  some more energy saving  rewards.

In less than four years, UNBC ‘s  Energy Management program and some incentives from BC Hydro have  combined to  see the University of Northern BC  save more than $375,000  in energy,  and $145 thousand  work of BC Hydro incentives.

The  first  round of savings  come from the University’s switch  to  LED lighting.  That switch  alone saves the University  more than $6,000 a year and saves enough  energy to power six houses over the same period .  Now the move is towards optimizing buildings. There are three phases to this portion of the program,

The first phase, investigation, was funded by BC Hydro. An energy efficiency expert visited the campus and generated a list of more than $200,000 worth of capital projects that could save UNBC $145,000 a year in electricity and heat.
“These projects will pay for themselves in 1.4 years, which is pretty incredible,” says Amanda Drew, UNBC’s Energy Technician. “We were only required to invest $90,000 under the terms of the program, but since all of the projects have such a quick payback, and we’ll see huge returns, it just makes sense to implement all of them.”

A number of projects were identified and are planned for the coming years:

• Optimizing the heating and ventilation systems of various buildings. Reducing how much air is pumped into a building lowers the energy demand required to heat or cool that excess air. Potential annual savings of $40,000.
• Refining air handling system programs. While weekly schedules are already in place for air handling units, some of the more unique buildings, such as the research labs, can be refined. Potential annual savings of $32,000.
• Adding occupancy sensors. If people are there, the air handler unit or lights will come on. Potential annual savings of $22,000.
• Optimizing water pumping. Reduce the amount of water and glycol pumped to match the demand for water and heat. Potential annual savings of $29,000.   
• Improving heat recovery. Heat from lab building exhausts can be captured that would otherwise be exhausted. Potential annual savings of $22,000.

“We were already very efficient. The BC Hydro program is more of a tune-up than anything else,” explains Drew. “A lot of these measures make sense, but we didn’t have the capacity to implement them. That’s where this program helped; it provided resources to investigate how to make our systems even more efficient.”

Part of the reason UNBC is in a position to take advantage of the BC Hydro program is because it set aside $250,000 in an “Energy Conservation Revolving Loan Fund” in 2012 to pay for energy projects. The University uses money from this fund to pay for capital projects with 80% of the realized savings returned to the fund to repay that loan. Once the loan is repaid, those payments drop to 50% for the lifetime of project, growing the fund’s balance.