Josh Barta
jbarta@uwyo.edu
In the midst of budget cuts, UW has partnered with Rocky Mountain Power to cut utility spending.
In the last year, UW saved two million kilowatt hours of electricity, which translates to roughly $150,000 in savings. UW has been active in Rocky Mountain Power’s business energy efficiency program, “Wattsmart”, since 2011.
Forest Selmer is UW’s deputy director of utilities management. He attributes the success of UW’s recent construction and retrofit projects to the partnership.
“Wattsmart has helped us achieve our energy goals, which include reducing costs and consumption,” Selmer said. “The incentives make the projects doable.”
Many of UW’s buildings consume high amount of energy due to their structure, with large windows playing a big role Selmer said.
“Windows cause a building to lose a lot of heat,” Selmer said. “Our building planners like to use a lot of windows in our buildings for natural light and they let out a lot of heat.”
Despite the rising energy costs, UW continues to forward its efforts into retrofitting its buildings to make them more energy efficient.
“We have done a lot of testing on our building’s envelope systems and how well they hold pressure and heat,” said Selmer. “There were a lot of problems with freeze outs in our buildings in the past. Our new building standards help us prevent leakages.”
The new construction and retrofitting standards include that buildings use a heat recovery ventilation system, which takes the heat ventilated outside and reuses it as energy for the building.
UW plans to use these ventilation systems to minimize the impact of some of their most energy-hungry buildings.
“Laboratories are by far the biggest consumers of energy, they use almost ten times more energy than an average office,” Selmer said. “We have most of our laboratories using heat recovering systems to reduce their impact.”
In addition to the Wattsmart program, UW has participated in Rocky Mountain Energy’s Blue Sky Renewable Energy program since 2008. The program has allowed the addition of new projects such as new solar carport structure next to its War Memorial Stadium made possible through a $76,200 Blue Sky Community Fund Award, provided by Rocky Mountain Power Blue Sky customers according to a Rocky Mountain Power press release.
“Being a Blue Sky partner helps us meet our sustainability goals and helps get the word out for renewable projects we do on campus,” UW Senior Engineer Steve Fletcher said.
Associate Director of the Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources Nicole Korfanta said she agrees that the program is good for UW.
“The grant from the Blue Sky program helped defray some of the up-front costs and allows us to start saving right away,” Kofanta said.
