Electrical Consumption Management

Historically, electricity has been the utility where the College spends the most money and as such, considerable effort has been expended in this area to reduce electrical consumption. There are many technologies that reduce electrical consumption and in most cases building occupants would never notice:

• Conversion of all fluorescent lighting from T12 tubes with magnetic ballasts to T8 tubes with electronic ballasts, and installation of T5 tubes in new projects. The T12 to T8 conversion took place nearly 10 years ago.
• Conversion of incandescent exit lights to LED exit lights.
• Replacement of inefficient electric motors with high efficiency motors
• Use of variable speed drives (VSD) combined with variable volume (VAV) HVAC systems to provide exactly the amount of heating, ventilating, and air conditioning to each space. A VAV system becomes even more efficient when combined with carbon dioxide sensors to improve the accuracy of outside make up air supplied to the space.
• Room occupancy sensors that turn on room lights when the room is occupied and turn the lights off when the room is unoccupied. We have installed occupancy sensors in all of our new buildings and are retrofitting them into existing buildings. The latest occupancy sensors will automatically change the room temperature to an occupied setting when the lights are on and an unoccupied setting when the lights are off.
• We are now experimenting with LED exterior and interior lights so we can be in a position to implement this technology when it matures. You can read an article about fluorescent, compact fluorescent and LED lighting from Scientific American at this link. As LED lights generate very little heat, they will also reduce cooling load resulting in reduction in electrical energy consumption.
• Our location in southeastern Pennsylvania and the moderate temperatures allow us to use heat pumps to heat and cool many of our buildings. Ground source and air source heat pump technology is evolving rapidly and the efficiency of heat pumps is improving rapidly. Thus we have been replacing our existing heat pumps with more efficient equipment with resultant decreases in electrical consumption.
• A substantial amount of our electrical energy is consumed during the cooling season as we use window air conditioners, water and air cooled chillers and heat pumps to cool our buildings. Modern heat pumps are even more efficient in the cooling mode than in the heating mode and we are replacing inefficient units with higher efficiency units.
• There are new heating/cooling technologies that are proving to be even more efficient than ground source heat pumps. We have installed a test system to evaluate the technology and if it proves to operate as efficiently as the manufacturer claims, we will move from heat pumps to this technology.
• Large chiller technology has significantly reduced the number of KW per ton of chilling capacity and we have installed 320 tons of state of the art magnetic levitation chillers supplying the Nicarry district cooling system with chilled water for the Hoover Center, the Masters Center complex, Nicarry and portions of Steinman. These chillers are very efficient as the bearings, lubricating oil, pumps and associated equipment have been replaced by magnetic levitation bearings resulting in significantly improved efficiency. We will be installing an additional 160 tons of magnetic levitation chilling this summer so it is online when we open the SMEC Phase III renovated areas this fall.
• Through the Residential Renewal strategy, we are planning to replace the inefficient window air conditioners in Myer, Ober and Royer with high efficiency building cooling systems when these buildings are renovated.
• We still have some buildings that were constructed when the cost of electricity was 1 cent per KWH – the Library is the largest consumer of electricity as it is heated with resistance heating. Thus, we are developing plans to improve the efficiency of the Library HVAC by use of improved heating and cooling technologies.
• To further reduce electrical consumption we have been installing solar film on windows with south exposures to improve occupant comfort and to reduce cooling loads.
• We are in discussion with the Elizabethtown Borough about installing wind turbines and a solar array as a prototype installation to evaluate this carbon free source of electricity.