Save Energy to Educate

For utilities looking to foster energy efficiency and
conservation among the customers they serve, energy
management solutions, combining wireless sensor technology
and the internet, is a new low-cost means to take a huge leap
toward efficiency and sustainability in the community from
public buildings to commercial properties. Schools are an
ideal place to start.

With budgetary challenges and energy costs rising, school administrators and facility managers must pare down all wasteful expenses to keep the focus on educating children. In addition, communities are increasingly targeting schools and public buildings to promote and demonstrate the effectiveness of green strategies. Thus, maintaining a cost-effective energy policy to reduce energy waste across public buildings has become an important way to curb spiraling energy budgets and reduce carbon emissions.

It takes energy to educate; teachers and students need an environment conducive for learning and electronics teaching aids are on the increase. But at the end of the day, what we find is that schools waste a substantial amount of energy for no benefit. Regardless of the school district size, energy expenses typically accounts for 2-3% of the total public education budget, and energy costs are increasing uncontrollably, up 50 to 80% since 2000. Energy is one of the few expenses that can be reduced without affecting classroom instruction. There are various approaches to reduce energy consumption and carbon

emission, but few have a significant near-term effect. Many require 5 to 15 years to achieve payback. An intelligent energy conservation program is the key to both short and long term sustainability.

It’s time to look at the larger opportunity to reduce energy consumption across the portfolio of schools and other public buildings in our communities. Schools districts need a combination of approaches, as they balance and prioritize short- and long-term objectives in alignment with their education and community missions.

Communities need a strategy for energy management that encompasses schools and other buildings. A broad based energy conservation program can be facilitated with greater visibility and control throughout a district with limited capital costs and rapid deployment. Millennial Net’s wireless Energy Efficiency Solutions are designed to leverage existing infrastructure to rapidly retrofit buildings and achieve significant savings of 10 to 30%; with a payback period, in most cases, of less than 2 years.

Most school districts have no idea how much energy they consume or what to do about it. Schools pay an average annual rate of $2 to $3 per square foot in energy consumption to maintain a comfortable learning environment; that’s $250 to $350 per pupil. Rising costs are driven by global dynamics resulting in a squeeze on budgets for operation and maintenance. While new schools are built to High Performance Schools standards that aim to significantly beat these statistics, the majority of existing schools operate with energy consumption that is “out of control”.

Measures to reduce consumption in existing schools tend to focus on expensive and disruptive capital improvements (i.e. more efficient equipment, light fixtures, windows, insulation or roofing), which passively save energy. These measures may indeed save energy, but do not provide visibility to energy consumption or whether those investments are cost-justified. Such measures tend to be building-centric, though some offer a web-based view into each building’s system. To significantly curb energy costs, school districts should adopt an on-going energy efficiency program to actively set policy and ensure compliance.

How Can Energy Efficiency Be Addressed at a District- Level?
Conserving energy in one individual school building is just the tip of the conservation iceberg. The majority of energy cost and therefore the opportunity for conservation -- includes the many buildings making up a school district. This effort requires a broader view and approach. Energy policy and compliance need to be encouraged on all levels within a school district; schools, equipment and classrooms.

A conservation program can be enabled at a district level through an intelligent energy management system with sensing and controls that extend from the meter to the classroom. This approach is markedly different from most energy management solutions available today -- that are centered only on HVAC equipment operation or lighting rather than consistent energy policy and compliance, which offer broader savings.

Intelligent Enterprise Energy Management
Intelligent enterprise energy management actively measures and controls energy consumption. It helps school districts and communities by enabling:
• Visibility to patterns of energy consumption
• Implementation of consistent energy policies
• Policy compliance
• Measuring performance for continuous improvement

Operation of HVAC and lighting represent most of the energy consumption in a school building. While policies may be developed to manually reduce wasteful consumption, generally, schools cannot consistently comply with those policies. Lights tend to be turned off, but controlling HVAC energy waste is more challenging. Given that most schools are occupied only 40% of the time, there is a huge waste of energy.

School districts need a flexible and effective way to consistently provide comfortable classrooms and reduce energy consumption when rooms are unoccupied. Energy profiles measured and recorded over time enable users to better understand consumption patterns and improve energy conservation.

Wireless Energy Efficiency Technology from Millennial Net
Aligning energy consumption with need, requires a greater sense of what is going on at the building level. The energy demand -- at point-of-use (classrooms, offices, etc.), as well as supply (HVAC equipment) and source meters (gas, electric, water) -- can all provide valuable insights for better energy conservation.

Millennial Net provides an energy solution to help balance the needs of both budgetary constraints and operational priorities.

The solution is designed for rapid and affordable deployment across multiple buildings. It uses wireless devices and the internet to reduce installation costs and provide greater coverage of sensors and control points. Energy savings are achieved by improved compliance and energy policy enforcement.

Millennial Net’s MeshScape® Energy Management System is an integrated framework for comprehensive remote monitoring and control of key energy sources, supply and demand. The framework combines the recent advances in technology, including wireless sensor networks, the internet and hosted software applications.

The hosted remote monitoring and control application is available immediately and covers one or more sites via a secure web-site that can be accessed anywhere. This remotely managed solution quickly generates savings and minimizes cost of ownership, upkeep and operation. Remote access provides greater system-wide visibility to assist your operations personnel in managing buildings and equipment, and help administrators to manage energy policy and costs.

Millennial Net’s wireless sensor network devices are ideally suited for retrofitting existing buildings. They work with legacy HVAC systems, fixtures and appliances, making it unnecessary to upgrade HVAC equipment to start saving energy. Wireless networking avoids the time and disruption of a hard-wired installation, so you do not need to wait for a long vacation or building shutdown.

The MeshScape wireless network is ideal for school buildings. This industrial-class wireless networking technology is a proven robust and scaleable foundation. Its highly responsive self- forming and self-healing network capability enables wireless sensors to be easily installed and put into service with minimal cost and disruption to existing facilities. Use of the wireless MeshScape technology within the energy management system provides users with high value information at a low cost. The system creates a robust flow of energy data for compliance monitoring, analysis, optimization, and reporting – all without changing existing HVAC systems.

There is essentially no impact on IT infrastructure or management. The MeshScape wireless network is independent of and can coexist with the schools WiFi network. The web- based energy management application is a “hosted application” that Millennial Net manages via the internet. There are several secure options, commonly accepted by IT security managers, for linking the schools wireless sensor network to the hosted application.

The web-based energy management system provides users secure access to monitor and control the intelligent devices according to privileges you grant. For example, HVAC management provides a means to monitor and control thermostats, schedules temperature set-points, and provides users with access to energy management charts, tables and reports. Authorized staff, responsible for implementing energy policies, input and modify temperature set-point ranges for each thermostat based on detailed room occupancy scheduling, such as normal occupancy, vacation/holiday periods, or special events. Other policy settings govern various operating modes and can permit and constrain local manipulation of energy consumption as a way to increase compliance. Certain modes may be triggered to manage demand peaks.

Historical and statistical reports, graphs and trending charts are provided to see overall system performance. Comparisons of day-to-day, zone-to-zone, building-to-building and time-to-time, reveal patterns of use and anomalies. These can highlight opportunities for changes in policies, behavior and investments in infrastructure. This is great for energy audits!

Energy Savings to Educate
While energy prices and energy consumption profiles vary regionally and building to building, typical savings of 10-30% can be achieved. An energy efficiency opportunity assessment should be conducted to develop a savings estimate for a specific building or portfolio. Typically, energy accounts for 2% to 3% of an annual school budget: HVAC alone can account for 40% to 60% of that expense. Schools are only occupied 40% of the time. Unless they were built or renovated recently, most school buildings in a district’s portfolio have inadequate energy management systems to set and enforce energy policies for an energy conservation program.

Such a program can result in annual saving of $15,000 to $30,000 per school, depending on the number of classrooms. Average payback is realized within two years.

For more information see www.millennialnet.com/energy.

Mark O’Hearne, VP of Business Development and Marketing
Mark O'Hearne leads business development and marketing, to commercialize and promote Millennial Net's wireless sensor network technologies and applications. He leverages more than 25 years of industrial and building automation, enterprise systems and supply chain management. Prior to Millennial Net he held marketing and business development positions at Brooks Automation, i2 Technologies, Andover Controls and Digital Equipment. His engineering career began at Air Products, where he over seven years as a chemical engineer his focus transitioned from process analysis and design to process control and optimization. Mark graduated from the Northeastern University High Tech MBA program and holds an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.