Ohio House Bill 264 (HB 264) allows school districts in the State to divert monies normally paid to their utility companies towards equipment improvements that have energy saving components. By using an Ohio energy services company to customize facility enhancements, significant reductions in utility consumption can be made without costing taxpayers anything.
The Marion City School District entered into a performance contract with The Brewer-Garrett Company which includes a performance guarantee. With unpredictable energy costs and interest rates remaining low, there has never been a better time to implement an Energy Conservation Program. Marion’s program includes upgrades to the District’s lighting, chilled water plant, and computing system.
The majority of the existing lighting in their facilities consists of fluorescent T8, 32 Watt lamps and electronic ballasted fixtures. Energy savings will be found by retrofitting these fixtures with electronic ballasts at a low ballast factor and 25 watt T8 lamps. For further savings, within the gyms and multi-purpose rooms throughout the district we are replacing all Metal Halide lamps with T5 fixtures.
The existing chilled water plant has a 900 ton chiller that is too large and continually cycles on and off due to low load conditions. A new 350 ton water cooled chiller will be installed and used nearly 100% of the time. The original chiller will be left in place to provide redundancy to the new chiller.
As part of the energy conservation program, we will implement a “Thin Client” computing system. The need for individual towers will be eliminated and instead the District’s computing will be consolidated and processed on a centralized server. Six servers will be installed as well as a software package to power down the monitors and PCs automatically with an aggressive schedule of 8 hours per day 5 days per week during the school year. This will save significant energy over break times and weekends. These solutions reduce operational and repair costs without compromising the user’s experience.
To learn more about Ohio energy services or HB 264, contact The Brewer-Garrett Company for a complementary energy audit.
