HAS energy conservation efforts add up to more opportunities in the classroom

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Holly Area Schools began an en...

HOLLY, Michigan – Taking advantage of a myriad of energy conservation opportunities is the reason why Holly Area Schools have managed to save a combined total of more than $423,000 over the course of three years in electrical and natural gas costs, Supervisor of Facilities and Operations, Denis Taylor said Monday.

Taylor summarized the districts’ savings in these areas for school board members during Monday’s HAS Board of Education meeting.

The idea of energy-saving methods was first explored in 2009 after Michigan School Business Officials first walked Taylor and other HAS staffers through the process.

“They came in and really helped us establish a committee,” Taylor said. Taylor said a secondary group, Energy Essentials, eventually stepped in, conducting an audit on the entire district’s maintenance systems. “Through the audit process, Energy Essentials pointed out our flaws – things we needed to work on and things like that,” Taylor said. “They continued to participate in five or six more committee meetings, making sure we were headed in the right direction.”

During the 2008-2009 school year, Taylor said the district shelled out $758,879 in electrical bills for the district’s many buildings. Through the establishment of several energy conservation techniques, electrical costs steadily decreased to $582,011 in the 2009-2010 school year, and $497,397 in 2010-2011. Taylor hopes to further reduce electrical costs for the district to $425,000 this year.

Taylor said many other school districts have taken the same energy-saving measures in an effort to save their districts money, but have hired outside companies to do the work. “They will ultimately save money for the district by making the changes, but they’re still paying a lot of money to an outside company to do the work – we’ve done it all in-house,” he said.

Working with Consumers Energy, Taylor said the district managed to change the electrical rate charge in the billing schedule. “This has resulted in the cost of electricity at the high school to go down by approximately $50,000 per year, and caused Sherman Middle School to go down by an additional $30,000 per year,” he said.

As for natural gas usage, Taylor said the district paid $513,939 in 2008-2009, $373,619 for the 2009-2010 school year, and $352,326 last year.  This year, Taylor hopes to further lower that cost to $300,000 – a difference of $161,613.

“Natural gas is supplied to us by a secondary supplier,” Taylor said.  By going with a secondary supplier, Taylor said it will save the school district another $50,000 for the current school year. “These savings will continue for the next two school years,” he added.

As part of the energy saving initiative, Taylor said the food services department has been asked to start one third of the ovens and all electrical equipment in each building every 15 minutes. “By turning things on in stages, it saves money,” Taylor said. “This will cut down on the peak demand factor that is part of our overall electrical bill.”

Taylor said district-wide, the boilers used to heat the schools have been turned down by 22 percent from their original settings. “By setting them back 22 percent, we may see a savings of approximately 5 percent of the total bill or about $20,000,” he said, adding that the district will be closely monitoring the situation through the cold weather period.

“Obviously, when kids are in the building, we want to keep temperatures comfortable for them, and we want all of the lights to be on,” Taylor said. “But what we’ve done is concentrate on the times when kids aren’t in the building – so now we’re making sure lights are turned off, the temperatures are dialed back,  and that sort of thing when the buildings are vacant,” he said. “And we’re doing a much better job of it.”

Additionally, parking lot lights are being turned off, district-wide, Taylor said. “The high school lights are turned off at midnight, while the parking lots at all of the other district buildings are turned off at 10 p.m.” Taylor said during summer month, all parking lot lighting stays off completely.

Taylor continued to list off other energy-saving tactics, including team cleaning the elementary schools in the summer, team cleaning the high school at the beginning of the year, thus reducing lighting use by 6-9 hours on the second floor and educational wing of the high school, turning off unused lights and television in unoccupied rooms prior to cleaning, and unplugging drinking fountain coolers, and shutting down the high school swimming pool during the summer months.

Additionally, Taylor said the district installed timers on the circulator pumps district-wide to shut off the domestic water heating loop during unoccupied building hours, and replaced BTU domestic hot water boilers with 5, 10 and on-demand hot water heaters at several of the district’s buildings.

Lighting in the many district school gymnasiums, and the bus garage were replaced with T8 fluorescent lighting, and 40-400 watt lights in the high school pool were replaced with 54-watt compact fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lighting in many hallways throughout the district’s buildings have been swapped out for more energy-efficient alternatives.

“The continuing oversight to reduce utility costs is part of our efforts to minimize expenditures where possible,” Superintendent Kent Barnes said Tuesday. “The numbers speak for themselves – working in conjunction with the buildings’ staffs, Mr. Taylor’s efforts have garnered dollars for use in the classroom.”