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To help Miami University during its budget crunch, several steps are being taken to conserve energy around campus, with the Recreational Sports Center (RSC) looking to making the first step with an entire energy retrofit over winter break.
According to Doug Curry, director of the RSC, the RSC was asked by Miami's budget office to cut back costs by $83,966 for this fiscal year.
As a result, the RSC will be making changes to the lighting around the facility to make it more energy efficient.
According to Tom Fister, director of physical facilities at the RSC, a contractor will be upgrading the light fixtures throughout the building to compact fluorescent bulbs, which provide more output with less energy.
Fister said there are currently 1000-watt light bulbs over the pool area and basketball court area. These will also be replaced with more energy efficient bulbs.
"You could run these 1000-watt bulbs for an hour and use the same amount of energy as it would to run an LCD television for 10 hours," Fister said.
He added that since the projected cost to re-lamp the RSC is $68,000 and the projected annual savings is $20,000, the changes in lighting will see a payback over about three years.
Fister said the RSC is also looking to decrease the temperature of the 50-meter pool and diving pool by 1 degree Fahrenheit.
According to Fister, both pools use a lot of steam energy to keep all 1.5 million gallons of water at an appropriate temperature.
Last summer the RSC lowered the leisure pool temperature by 1 degree and since then, they have not received any negative feedback or complaints from their customers, Fister said.
"Lowering these pools just by 1 degree could be a considerable difference to the amount of energy consumed," Fister said. "Last fiscal year the RSC spent about $270,000 in steam production for all aquatic operations. By reducing the temperature by just 1 degree could extract about a 5 percent or $16,250 savings cost."
The RSC has also made a few smaller changes to conserve energy.
According to Curry, in the past two months, more recycling bins have been ordered for the facility. He said the RSC has also cut back its paper costs by printing out 5,000 brochures, rather than 15,000, relying more heavily on their Web site.
"We constantly look at everything to become more efficient," said Curry. "We are spending the students' money and we want to be as effective and efficient as possible."
According to Tony Ferraro, energy management engineer, Miami has also made cuts across campus in several different department, such as cutting back on paper production and utility costs. In response to the tight budgeting, the university is carrying out plans to become more energy efficient.
"It is difficult to quantify how much energy Miami's projects have saved because there have been so many," Ferraro said.
Some of these projects include various departments deciding to send their paper flyers and newsletters electronically, rather than wasting paper.
"For the past five or six years there has been a constant effort in carrying out projects to reduce the amount of energy consumed in the state buildings and residence halls," Ferarro said.
Ferraro said one way Miami has tried to conserve energy is the new engineering building's motion-censored lighting. Also, the new business building currently being built will include a whole host of energy efficient products and will be lead goal certified.
"The key is to focus on conservation," Fister said. "Miami can go a long way in conserving energy."
