No idea is too big or small when saving energy and improving systems. Joe Lestanguet, Inspector, Planner, and Estimator for Facilities Management Building Maintenance Services (FM BMS), shared an energy-saving idea with Sam Cole, an Energy Project Engineer from the Energy and Engineering office, and they recently implemented the project together.   

Animal spaces, unlike office spaces, need constant outside air supplied through the ventilation system for safety. Pulling outside air into a building, conditioning it, and sending it to the spaces costs significantly more than filtering and recirculating air as office spaces can do. Using only outside air requires it to be heated or cooled more than recirculated air and these spaces pull in outside air constantly, whether or not people are in the space. One such animal space is the Cole B building, which seemed to be a great place to use Joe's idea. Cole B is an animal research and laboratory building with very high airflows. 

The idea presented by Joe Lestanguet was to give temperature control to the Cole B building manager. The building has moderately advanced control capabilities but operates on a single temperature and humidity setpoint in every space twenty-four hours a day, year-round, regardless of use. Upon engaging with the customer, it turned out that 25-50% of the animal spaces may be vacant at any given time due to gaps in research work.   

Sam's student intern, Tohami Bin Shafiq, developed a control panel design and a control sequence that would allow control of each space. Tohami then asked the BMS HVAC Controls team to weigh in on the design and approach to ensure his plan would work. He then worked with a local company to fabricate and assemble the control panel. BMS HVAC and Electrical teams installed the panel outside the building manager's main office. The Controls Engineering team installed the required additional controls infrastructure and did the programming. 

This control panel has switches that allow the building manager to select which spaces that were occupied or vacant. This control panel would then inform our control system so that occupied spaces would continue to receive their precise temperature and humidity control. In contrast, the unoccupied rooms would have their temperature and humidity requirements relaxed. 

A cross-functional team of staff from various FM shops worked seamlessly to make this energy savings project happen. BMS Alarms worked with the teams and the customer to set back the room temperature setpoints of vacant spaces to avoid setting off temperature alarms. Their expertise helped make this project happen. Sheetmetal even helped punch an additional hole in the panel after we realized we didn't have the number of switches that we wanted.  

The panel installation went well, and the savings are adding up! This project reduced annual chilled water used in the building by 26% and steam used in the building by 18%. We are also saving $7,000 annually with this project. Way to go to everyone that was involved!