by Brianna Crandall — March 25, 2016—Johnson Controls was selected by two major universities in the United States and Canada in recent weeks to help optimize their energy performance through energy performance contracts.
Arkansas State University
Johnson Controls and Arkansas State University signed a $15 million energy performance contract expected to dramatically advance the university’s sustainability initiatives, including improvements to lighting, water conservation, waste management, energy management, HVAC and utility monitoring systems. A-State is a public university founded in 1909 with over 13,100 graduate and undergraduate students on a campus of 1,376 acres. The Facilities Management department was awarded the APPA Award for Excellence in 2010, recognizing excellence in the field of educational facilities.
Several A-State buildings will undergo improvements to lighting, water conservation, HVAC and other systems under a new energy performance contract.
Recent energy legislation has enhanced the Arkansas Energy Performance Contracting program, allowing Arkansas State and other educational institutions to benefit. Energy performance contracting is a financing mechanism used to pay for energy efficiency improvements, which are then paid back through annual energy and operational savings, explains the company. The Arkansas State energy performance contract features a 20-year payback and operational savings — said to be the first of its kind in the state of Arkansas.
The upgrades, scheduled for completion by November 30, 2016, will include:
- Lighting — Johnson Controls will install new LED lights and replace emergency lighting fixtures throughout campus.
- Water conservation — Johnson Controls will either replace or retrofit plumbing fixtures, toilets, urinals, aerators on lavatory faucets and kitchen sinks, and showerheads with water-efficient fixtures and systems.
- Waste management — Johnson Controls will install four industrial-grade trash compactions systems, one each at the Convocation Center, Facilities Management building, Education and Communications building, and Centennial Bank football stadium.
- Energy management — Johnson Controls will make various software, server, workstation and database improvements at more than a dozen facilities through campus.
- Heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) — Johnson Controls will replace an aging chiller with an energy-efficient chiller at the IT Services building; replace three air-handling units with new units at the Education and Communications building; and replace two air-handling units with new units at the Lab Sciences East building.
- Lab hood improvements — The Arkansas Bioscience Institute (ABI) building has several lab fume hoods critical to experiments and research that have been failing and causing room pressure issues as well as excessive use of energy. Johnson Controls will replace the existing failed controls and sensors with new TSI lab controls to provide a safe environment for faculty and students as well as decrease energy usage.
- Utility monitoring — Johnson Controls will install an energy management platform that will provide real-time monitoring of electric power demand and consumption.
Chet Howland, energy program manager for the Arkansas Energy Office, which is working closely with Arkansas State through its seven-step energy performance contracting program, commented:
The Arkansas State project is setting the standard by which other energy performance contracts will be measured in the state. We expect the project to have an economic impact of over $30 million with no upfront cost to Arkansas State, as guaranteed energy savings will pay for the project over the next two decades.
Wilfrid Laurier University
Wilfrid Laurier University is embarking on an initiative to transform its building portfolio into a leading example of sustainable management in the university sector and selected Johnson Controls as its project partner. Laurier is a Canadian university with more than 19,000 undergraduate and graduate students across three campuses, known for academic excellence and “a culture that inspires lives of leadership and purpose.”
Under the Energy Services Performance Contract (ESPC), this summer Johnson Controls will initially implement a series of Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) valued at just over $5 million in three of Laurier’s facilities. Johnson Controls will simultaneously undertake a detailed analysis of 48 additional facilities located on both Laurier’s Waterloo and Brantford campuses. The detailed analysis will identify a series of ECMs for each facility, with work expected to take place this fall in phase two of the implementation project.
The ECMs to be evaluated and implemented include more traditional measures such as: lighting retrofits with LED technology, low-flow water fixtures, renewable technologies, demand control ventilation, retro-commissioning, real-time metering, fuel-switching and heat recovery. In an effort to address Laurier’s mandate to go beyond the traditional energy mix at its campuses, Johnson Controls will also evaluate innovative technologies and measures, including: combined heat and power with cogeneration and tri-generation, solar photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal, wind power, heat recovery / heat pump chillers, ground source heat pumps, and energy storage coupled with microgrid technologies and integration.
Energy performance contracting
Johnson Controls says it helped establish energy performance contracting in 1983 and has implemented more than 3,000 energy performance contracts in North America alone, including many at higher education institutions. Some of the larger projects include Florida State University, Tulane University, University of Central Oklahoma, University of Massachusetts-Amherst and University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
