Energy consumption at UT Arlington accounts for nearly 75% of the University’s total GHG emissions. This energy is intimately tied to buildings; heating, cooling, and lighting more than 7.3 million square feet of building space and powering electronic equipment, computers, and devices requires a great deal of energy. With a growing campus community and a variety of energy-intensive buildings such as laboratories, data centers, and research facilities, energy efficiency and conservation is a critical component of responsible growth and cost control.
At UT Arlington, and all other Colleges and Universities as well as public and private businesses, utility management was and continues to be a never ending challenge. With the enormous increase in fuel and utility costs, energy conservation is now critical to any College or University’s survival. Every effort must be made to conserve utilities to enable resources to be used where they are essential to the academic mission and to hold down costs to keep tuition and fees to a minimum. This conservation may also help provide faculty and staff wage increases to meet inflation. It is projected that utility costs could more than double, almost triple, between now and January 2007 at UT Arlington. UT Arlington’s Administration and Facilities Management has accepted this challenge and will implement an energy conservation program that will result in a yearly utility and operations savings of just over $2,250,000.00 with simple payback of only eight years, for a total saving of $18,000,000.00. After the eight years, UT Arlington will continue to save and be able to use this saving for mission essential requirements.
UT Arlington selected Siemens Building Technologies (Siemens) to perform energy and infrastructure analysis of its facilities. Throughout the physical survey, energy conservation and facility improvements were identified. UTA and Siemens studied the Energy Cost Reduction Measures (ECRM’s) and have identified 18 that have the most potential for energy and operations savings, while improving overall occupant comfort. Among these 18 ECRM’s will be the addition of a new 4,000 ton satellite chilled water plant, transformer upgrades, comprehensive lighting retrofits, occupancy sensors, air handling unit replacement, high efficiency motor upgrades, and HVAC improvements to the UTA Regional Communication Center, NanoFab, Swift Center, Maverick Stadium and Wetsel Building. The implementation of this program is scheduled to begin in early fall of 2006 and has a twelve month completion schedule. UT Arlington will not only save critical resources but this will help in UT Arlington’s intended efforts to be environmentally responsible, economically profitable, and a healthy place in which to live and work.
TXU and Siemens are working together to identify all the savings that qualify within the Texas and TXU Rebate Program Guidelines. TXU and Siemens have made one full day evaluation and have scheduled additional visits. This may provide additional resources to continue other UTA energy savings and facility improvements.
If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact the Office of Facilities Management at 817.272.3571
UT Arlington retrofitted two natural gas boilers at the Thermal Energy Plant that produce steam for campus heating and process loads. These boilers were retrofitted with new boiler Burner Management and Combustion Controls to increase efficiency and reduce emissions. The new controls have flue gas recirculation, stack oxygen metering, and trim and staged combustion to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions.
Half of the funding for the project was provided by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) through the New Technology Implementation Grant (NTIG) Program. The goal of the TCEQ NTIG program are to offset implementation costs of existing technologies that reduce the emissions of pollutants from existing facilities. This project meets that goal by allowing UTA reduce NOx emissions on two of its boilers instead of one boiler at this time. The additional grant money has allowed the reduction of NOx emissions for one of the boilers for at least two years before we had it funded and planned, reducing the emissions over that time.
For more information about this project contact Robb Chock, UTA Facilities Engineer at 817.272.7498 or rchock@uta.edu.
Demand response programs have become an integral component of the evolving smart grid infrastructure. Voluntary incentive programs help reduce excessive strain on the energy grid during times of peak demand or grid stress/instability, which contributes to grid reliability and helps to prevent rolling brownouts. UT Arlington participates in an emergency interruptible load service program by agreeing to shed one megawatt of electricity if an event is called by the grid operator. Program participation is year-round, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The expected net cash flow for this one-megawatt reduction commitment is $36,000 per year.