Energy Conservation

Working Group Minutes

Meeting Minutes
December 13, 2005

Attendees: Rick Bigelow, Russ Boudreau, Todd Holland, Nancy Apple, Paul Ominsky, Deb Morrissey, Dale Hennessey

Energy Conservation

Various strategies for promoting energy conservation. ‘The Big Turn Off’ campaign, were discussed.

Short Term

The immediate need is to get information out to the community regarding turning off lights and equipment during the holiday break. Todd advocated for not only turning off equipment, but also unplugged it, as many electronic devices use energy even when turned off (household electronics use 75% of their energy when turned off).

Todd and Russ agreed to send an e-mail with tips to the OPC and administrative and academic assistants. Nancy agreed to talk about it at the December OPC meeting. Deb agreed to check to make sure LITS will not be turning on computers remotely the week of December 26th.

Long Term

Several factors that work against conservation were discussed. Given the extended building hours, often the last person in many buildings is a student so there is no one to assign the responsibility for turning off the lights. It is often difficult to find the light controls and some lights are on breakers. As a convenience, offices turn on equipment when they arrive in the morning even though it may not be used right away or is used very little during the day. Blanchard is cleaned from midnight to 8am, so many lights are on there all night.

Occupancy sensors are a way to achieve results without having to control behavior. We need to establish a priority list for sensor installation.

We need a policy as to what lights should be left on after 2pm (e.g., hallways, stairwells, lobbies). Paul indicated that he knows of no interior lights that are left on for security purposes.