The Public Buildings Service’s (PBS) Great Lakes Region of the General Services Administration (GSA) is committed to energy conservation in the management of its Federal properties.
The GSA PBS Property Management office (Office) in the GSA E. Ross Adair Federal Building in Ft. Wayne, IN, developed a new strategy for energy conservation to add to its existing array of practices.
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The Office was searching for additional energy savings at the E. Ross Adair Federal Courthouse, and reviewed every energy-consumption device to see where additional savings could be obtained.
The Office had already installed motion-detection light switches, set the adjustment of hot water in the facility to the lowest safe level, maintained the HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) system at the most efficient level while still maintaining customer satisfaction, replaced T-12 lights with energy saving T-8 lights (linear fluorescent lamps are specified by diameter size in 1/8ths of an inch — a T-8 lamp is a one-inch diameter lamp and a T-12 lamp is a one and one-half inch diameter lamp), changed various electrical motors to E-motors (energy-saving motors), and numerous other practices.
The Office concluded that it could also further improve its energy conservation efforts by addressing energy consumption by the electric water fountains. These fountains run “24/7” (“24″ hours a day/”7” days a week) and cycle six to ten times per hour, consuming about 1.5 kw-hrs/day (kilowatt hours per day).
Since the Federal facility primarily operates only ten hours daily, the Office concluded that energy used for continuous water-cooling was being wasted.
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| Historic E. Ross Adair Federal Building, Ft. Wayne, IN (photo: Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.) |
The Office installed simple mechanical timers on all of the water fountains in the historic courthouse facility, saving 0.75 kw-hrs (kilowatt hours) for each unit every day without sacrificing customer satisfaction since there was no customer presence in the building outside of business hours.
Using a conservative cost estimate of $0.10/kw-hr, the 20 water fountains in the facility use about 25 kw/hrs. daily which costs about $2.50 daily. Using timers — which cost about $3.00 each and limit the usage hours to 10 hours daily — will yield a savings of about $1.50 per day. After an initial investment of $60.00 in the equipment, the payback will be in less than 40 days.
With this energy conservation practice employed in even larger Federal buildings, an even greater cost savings would be realized without affecting the usability of the drinking fountains or customer service.
Contact:
Kenneth Jacobson
Property Manager
Public Buildings Service
Great Lakes Region
U.S. General Services Administration
kenneth.jacobson@gsa.gov
