University Discusses Winter Cost Solutions

By Noah Essenmacher

While some colleges in Michigan have lengthened their winter break period to mitigate energy costs, SVSU says it’s looking at other options to soften the financial blow of high cost months.

“We do know roughly what it saves per day if we were shut down. It depends on what month you’re in,” Hocquard said. “It is surprising. [January] is like $20,000 per day. In December it is more like $15,000 per day. It sounds like a lot of money but when you look at tens of millions of dollars for a budget and business needs of the University, people expect people to be here when they call for admissions or whatever. So we haven’t really extended it as other schools have. [The potential for savings] is the same as a lot of other places. We have just have not made that decision yet. We’ve looked at it, but there are a lot of other factors involved besides just that money.”

Hocquard said that specific future projects offer better alternatives than scheduling adjustments. These projects include a sub metering system for individual buildings and a possible aqua thermal heating and cooling system for the Health and Human Services Building.

“One of the projects we are talking about to save energy is to put sub metering into buildings, so at least we will know how much energy is going into say Living Center North versus Living Center South. Right now we don’t really know that and to get down to the utilities like water and that sort of thing so we can become closer to identifying groups. Then we can have [efficient energy usage] contests between buildings or whatever so there may be some possibilities like that in the future.”

“We are considering a pretty creative venture with the new Health and Human Services Building. We’re talking about putting in an aqua thermal heating and cooling [system] for that building. That would use water-to-water heat pumps and the ponds out front … In the summertime the costs are close whether we can do it that way or with the electric chiller, but it is less expensive. But in the wintertime we can heat the water instead of a regular gas boiler and heat it for almost half the energy. It is electric instead of gas, so it saves quite a bit of energy. It is getting there and hopefully we’ll have it.”

Hocquard encourages students and faculty to share their own creative solutions to the energy issue.

“I don’t know if there are ideas that people could give to us but we are willing to work with them. I think that student organizations are the best avenue for [reaching students.] I’ve heard that some schools have contests for ideas.”

SVSU takes measures each year to encourage appropriate use of energy resources on campus.

“We gear up for the obvious things,” Hocquard said. “We try to talk to people about lowering the thermostats in their areas. In various years in the past we have put out fliers keep your thermostats down in the winter and things like that. The RAs are supposed to be involved … they are looking after the buildings, including [identifying] what is broken or doesn’t work or if they see something that is very cold or very hot they will let us know sometimes.”

Hocquard noted some of the behaviors that add to the energy costs of the campus.

“In the smaller buildings and here in the housing, the students had control of their spaces, and over the years people were turning the heat up all day and opening up a window, things like that, or they would go off even in the summertime…they would turn the air conditioning down a long ways and just leave. That had some problems to it too. We have tried to adjust the thermostats in the housing area. We put in adjustable thermostats that can only be adjusted to a certain range.

“Personal responsibility is the only way to solve it,” Hocquard said. “Turn out the lights when you don’t need them, screw in the fluorescents instead of the regular incandescents, and just not opening the window when it is too cold out, and keep wearing that sweater when you can.”