Living Lab: Education Building Mechanical Building Controls Re-Design
A group of engineering students, as part of the Office of Sustainability's Living Lab initiative, was able to produce some interesting recommendations for energy conservation on campus.
The Office of Sustainability’s Living Lab initiative uses the campus and the community as a laboratory for teaching and research to explore all aspects of sustainability. Students, faculty and staff work collaboratively on applied projects that address campus sustainability issues and challenges, including energy and water conservation. As part of Energy Conservation Month, we’d like to take this opportunity to highlight some of our successful Living Lab projects related to energy conservation.
The Education Building has been a fantastic location on campus to pilot many energy-saving initiatives due to its isolated nature and its older infrastructure. As a Living Lab sponsored design project for their Mechanical Engineering 495 class, Jay Brockmann, Luke Deobald, Tanner Deobald, and Dacey Schentag analyzed the possibility of a re-design of the Education Building’s mechanical controls. The students worked with Facilities Management to develop a set of baseline data for the building and set about looking at opportunities to increase heating efficiency.
Their work resulted in several recommendations towards increasing energy conservation in the Education Building. The students suggested that by adjusting heat recovery schedules, thermostat set point adjustments, and introducing an optimum start to the HVAC system, it was possible to achieve nearly a 15% reduction in total energy consumption with a very small amount of labour.
The Office of Sustainability is proud of its Living Lab initiative and the students who take part in it. It takes a wide variety of disciplines and input to achieve sustainable solutions to complex problems, and facilitating this interdisciplinary study puts us one step closer to becoming a truly sustainable University.