Energy Conservation

Electrical

• Great job Hope College community! We reduced our electricity consumption from 2008 to 2009 by 9.46% - an incredible achievement!
  
  
• Martha Miller Center, DeVos Fieldhouse, Lubbers Hall, and Graves Hall have lighting controls with motion sensors and building automation scheduling to turn off lights when unoccupied.
  
  
• The DeVos Fieldhouse 500KVA transformer is “hot” only on a need to use basis (only a few hours per year for major events).
  
  
• We specify new equipment and retrofit existing pump, elevator, and air handler motors with frequency drives or “soft start” motor starters to lower peak demand charges.
  
  
• The college has changed 36% of our outdoor light fixtures from mercury vapor lamps to 250 watt metal halide. This reduces energy consumption by 33%.
  
  
• Twenty-three cottages, Brumler Apartments, and Columbia Apartments have been changed over to the central campus 12Kv distribution system, which is on a lower electric rate.
  
  
• New building transformers use environmentally safe non-PCB oil.
  
  
• Approximately 85% of our lighting fixtures have been converted from T-12 bulbs to the more energy efficient T-8 bulbs (tens of thousands of bulbs). Our goal is to be 100% T-8 by 2010. Energy savings give us a two to three year payback.

Heating and Cooling

• Both the Martha Miller Center and the DeVos Fieldhouse meet ASHRAE 90.1 specifications with heat recovery on the building exhaust and night and weekend setbacks controlled by the Building Automation Computer.
  
  
• The college reviews the natural gas industry reports and forecasts and pre-purchases natural gas as far out as five years. This protects the College against unusual spikes in rates.
  
  
• We have installed temperature limiting thermostats, 72 degree max, in all cottages and apartments.
  
  
• Dykstra Hall, Kollen Hall, Lubbers Hall, and Graves Hall have been remodeled with thermal pane windows and better zone heating controls.
  
  
• As we replace furnaces in cottages and apartments we have gone from 78% efficient to 94% efficient models. We have replaced approximately 50% of these furnaces to date.
  
  
• In all academic, administrative and residential buildings (which are on our central heating plant system) – we have lowered the heating water temperature between 10 and 20 degrees.
  
  
• Approximately 25% of the closed loop heating systems have filtration units installed making those systems more efficient.

• DePree Art Building has a heat recovery system on the paint studio exhaust and make-up air system.
  
  
• During Christmas break, every cottage and apartment turns down the thermostats to 60 degrees. Academic and residential building thermostats are lowered to 60 degrees as allowed by equipment and experiment requirements.
  
  
• College East apartments is running one heating pump instead of the two normally in use.
  
  
• We have been replacing HVAC equipment with the more energy efficient models with frequency drives and more efficient cooling coils.
  
  
• The college has changed all of our steam traps on campus to “Steamguard” units. These units save approximately 13% of our natural gas consumption over standard traps. The total replacement of steam traps on campus, funded through the operating budget, will have a three year payback.
  
  
• In the past five years, we have replaced two old inefficient “Wickes” Boilers with two new “Johnston Boilers” as part of the Science Center building project. All four boilers are now high efficiency units.
  
  
• All mercury thermostats in cottages are being replaced with electronic thermostats (approximately 30% completed to date).