The increase in electricity use at Rensselaer is associated with the following factors: new buildings, research, personnel electronic devices and renovation to existing buildings.

In the past year Rensselaer has constructed the Mueller Center and Barton Hall. Each building is fully air-conditioned, is equipped for a high density of data ports to support the computing environment, and has additional equipment and lighting loads.

The Rensselaer Plan has set a goal of significantly increasing the value of research on an annual basis. The type of research performed at Rensselaer is clearly associated with equipment that uses electricity. Many laboratories have high electric loads.

The plethora of personnel electronic devices in use today has a load implication. Whether it is a laptop, pc, coffee warmer, refrigerator, cell phone or a pda the total power requirement becomes noticeable. Given the use of 4000 pc’s with a demand of 400 watts the total demand can approach 1600 kW or an annual use of 1,400,000 kWh.

Renovations to existing buildings have also contributed to the annual increase. The Troy building and Pittsburgh building renovations have caused at least a four-fold increase in annual kWh use. The buildings are totally air-conditioned, have more occupants and are occupied for longer hours that before.

The Energy Management Program at Rensselaer has been in place in 1992. This program has three components that have been extremely effective in lowering both demand and consumption. The energy awareness program was implemented as a first step in changing occupant behavior in regard to energy use. An incentive program was designed to reward departments across the campus that were able to reach a ten percent target for reduction. Those successes were rewarded with thirty percent of the cost savings for their efforts. A monthly energy report was sent to all buildings across campus explaining their building electric use and cost.

The second phase was to review the revised electric use in buildings after the awareness program was stable. Those buildings that still had a high level of electric use were then analyzed for HVAC and lighting retrofits. Over $2.5 million was invested in this program with a simple payback of less than four years. The receipt of $500,000 of utility rebates further leveraged this investment.

The final phase of the program was to negotiate a special rate structure with the local utility in lieu of building a cogeneration facility. This resulted in further additional electric cost savings that Rensselaer has enjoyed for over twelve years.

In the future the electric needs at Rensselaer will continue to be met by a variety of energy generation methods. The 2 kW PV array at VCC is an excellent device for evaluation. Fuel cells may become part of the energy portfolio in the Biotechnology building. Implicit in the design of all our projects at Rensselaer is the premise that energy utilization will be of paramount importance.