Energy Saving Strategies - 1st Phase

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Facilities Management Department has been working on energy saving strategies in order to meet the objectives of the UVic Sustainability Action Plan.  This plan outlines savings' targets in electrical consumption and reduction in GHG emissions from heating fuel consumption.  One of the programs has involved detailed engineering assessments of our building operations including lighting systems, and temperature settings during unoccupied hours.

As a 1st phase, we have developed a plan to modify the heating and general area lighting systems' operating schedules in the following buildings:

• BEC       Business and Economics Building
• DSD       David Strong Building
• HSD       Human and Social Development Building
• ELW        Engineering Lab Wing Building
• ECS        Engineering Computer Sciences Building
• SSM       Social Sciences and Mathematics Building
• SCI        Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Building

The intention is to reduce the wasted energy from having systems operating when the building is essentially unoccupied.  The building users will typically not notice any difference to normal operation.  The heating systems will have the operating hours reduced to reflect typical majority use of the building.  The setback temperature during the unoccupied hours’ schedule will be reduced by only 1°C to 2°C.

The fluorescent lighting systems in these buildings will also be re-fitted with the latest technology, lower wattage lights as well.  Once again, users of the buildings will typically not notice any difference in lighting levels.  The new lamps produce the same output for 7% less energy consumption.

The combination of these programs to these first six (6) buildings is significant, yielding an annual GHG savings of 766 tonnes, equivalent to about 153 automobiles being removed from the road and the annual electricity savings is equal to an average of 314 British Columbia homes’ annual consumption.

These programs will be implemented during the next six months with completion in April 2012.  We appreciate support for these important programs to save wasted energy and reduce our campus GHG footprint.