Stimulus money energizes GCSU

Gov. Sonny Perdue announced this week that GCSU will receive $1.9 million in federal funds to improve energy efficiency across campus.

The funds are part of $63.1 million distributed throughout the state to 135 energy efficient projects.

The funding stems from President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with roughly $27 million of the energy-efficient stimulus funds split between 26 Georgia universities including the University of Georgia, the University of West Georgia and Georgia State University.

Ben Pratt, Kevin Murner, Rick Ruark and Laurie Strawder of the Physical Plant all designed, calculated and submitted four potential energy-efficient plans to the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority after being given just 30 days to engineer and fine tune the plans.

GEFA approved two of the plans designed by GCSU, the Campus Utility Multi-metering Program and the Building Automation and Pipeline Installation program. The multi-metering project, which adds multiple energy meters that measure how much energy a building uses, will cost $783,675 and save $242,671 a year.

While the automation project, which installs new pipe and computer programs in a few buildings, will cost $1,099,150 and will save roughly $121,335 a year.

The total savings of $364,006 annually from both projects adds much needed savings to the stressed GCSU budget.

The grant came as a surprise to many GCSU staff members, who were both honored and excited to be selected as a recipient of the ARRA funds.

“I almost fell out of my chair,” said Ben Pratt, assistant vice president for facilities and co-designer of the projects. “But the only way we’re going to (succeed) is get the community involved.”

Pratt wants students to be aware of the efforts many GCSU staff members make to cut energy costs around campus and plans to team up with students to lower energy costs and reduce GCSU’s carbon footprint.

“The Plant Efficiencies sub-committee of SGA is talking about things like lights out on a certain day,” said Pratt, who keeps most lights off in his offices all day. “We practice what we preach, but we’ve got to get everyone behind us to do it.”

Pratt insists that if students, teachers and staff team up to promote energy efficiency on campus, people would not only save GCSU money, but also help to protect the local environment.

“I do think energy conservation is important,” Cara Powell, a freshman environmental science club member, said. “There’s a lot of ways students can cut energy costs on their own, like using energy-saving light bulbs or simply shutting (off) your computer screen.”

Though students can make an effort to reduce their energy consumption, the biggest savings will come largely from the new technology purchased with the federal funds.

The metering project adds meters to 36 different buildings which provides the technology needed to measure the amount of natural gas, fuel oil, water, steam, hot water and chilled water used per building, said Kevin Murner, co-designer of the projects and associate director for Energy Management.

Murner added that the Building Automation and Pipeline Program basically replaces all of the heating and ventilation controls around the Centennial Center, as well as the MSU Dining Hall and Health Science West.

Powell states that the Environmental Science Club looks forward to using these readings to facilitate awareness and events among the students about GCSU’s energy efficiency.

Students have proposed the idea of having competitions to see which buildings use the least water or energy, readings which will be easily accessible through the new meters funded by the federal grants.

“It’s making the student body knowledgeable of these programs is what’s going to help us get there,” Pratt said about reducing energy spending. “We can’t do it by ourselves and (students) will be one of the catalysts once we get momentum.”

Perdue stated that many Georgians will be unaware of the projects that receive funding around the state, but Pratt and others hope that these projects will not go unnoticed by the GCSU community.

“You’ve got so many Georgia institutions competing for 11 million dollars or so a year and we got 2 million dollars of it,” Pratt said. “We’ve set the bar up here for (GCSU).”

GCSU currently leads the University System of Georgia in energy efficiency, especially after the addition of the Chiller Plant which allows GCSU to cool and heat the buildings more efficiently than many other universities. Students will see GCSU continue to improve in energy efficiency with the addition of the federal funds.

“I think it speaks for the continued success of our institution,” Murner said of receiving the grant. “We strive to be the best, not only with academics, but also with facility management and energy savings to help with environmental impacts by reducing our carbon footprint.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 18 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry