MAHANOY CITY - The Mahanoy Area School District is beginning to see cost savings in energy usage due to the upgrades in the district's buildings that were completed last year.
Business Manager Jack Hurst spoke briefly during Thursday's meeting of the Mahanoy Area Board of Education about a PPL e-Power rebate recently received.
"The district has received $36,575 in PPL rebates as a result of the energy upgrade project," Hurst said. "I'd like to thank Bob (Pastucha, facilities manager) for working with them (Schneider Electric) in bringing that money back to the district."
In 2008, Mahanoy Area retained Schneider Electric to perform a detailed energy analysis of the district's facilities, with a primary focus of student/faculty comfort, saving energy, improving operations and addressing some key HVAC infrastructure improvement needs.
The $2.2 million project made improvements in the elementary/middle school regarding lighting, energy management system and central plant heating, along with new natatorium/locker room heat recovery units and a new elementary/middle school high-efficiency chiller, condensing unit and centrifugal chilled water pumps.
After the meeting, Hurst explained that the upgrade project was completed in the spring of 2011. He said the energy savings are meeting the projections.
"We had planned on saving with those PPL rebates. As far as (Schneider) guaranteed savings, they have an annual guarantee of $149,000," Hurst said. "Basically, they started measuring the savings beginning in August, and through October we've reached savings of $5,332. Right now we're in the measurement and verification period, and we'll be figuring out if they're going to hit the $149,000 amount."
Putting the $5,332 savings in another way, the energy efficiency during that three-month period is equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide discharged into the atmosphere by 40 tons, which is equal to nine cars taken off the road in a year, Hurst said.
Hurst said that the upgrades and new equipment have been working as expected.
"Everything is great. We completely revamped the swimming area HVAC system and the heat recovery system in there," Hurst said. "Most of the lighting in the elementary/middle school was upgraded, and we put a new chiller on top of the roof for the air conditioning."
He explained that the high school building had digital controls for lighting and energy control, but the older elementary/middle school building controls needed to be upgraded.
"Those digital controls really give us control and efficiently manage our energy usage there," Hurst said. "We're really pleased how the project has gone so far."
Hurst said the original plan was to start the measurement period on energy savings last June, but the fire in the middle school on Memorial Day led to that period to begin in August.
"Before we were to start the test period, (Schneider) had to come in and do their testing and verification that all the controls were working as they had anticipated," Hurst said. "But when the fire hit, it completely knocked everything out of whack in the elementary/middle school and they had to come in probably for a week and a half redoing everything they had done."
