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News & Announcements
2/9/2011 | Boiler and ventilation adjustments lead to savings
Maintenance team leader and acting facility manager Bruce Cline was pleased to hear from his contact at Shared Services British Columbia (SSBC) when they said they had experienced significant energy savings.
SSBC’s Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre (KRCC) saw their gas energy consumption reduced by 5.8 per cent and electrical consumption by 13.4 per cent between September 2009 and September 2010, says Cline.
KRCC is a remand and sentenced facility for adults that has grown from 167 to 350 inmates since its opening in 1989.
The correctional centre is a heavy user of electricity, gas and water.
“It’s 24/7, so the building itself is what we refer to as an energy pig,” says Cline.
The facility has double-bunked each of their living cells except for the segregation cells to meet demand, says Cline.
“The load on the building has gone up substantially,” he adds.
The savings in gas consumption can be credited to two building maintenance engineers (BMEs) Craig Reynolds and the now retired Brian Bartlett.
“We adjusted the firing rate in the main boilers that supply the hot water for the whole facility and I think that’s where the major gas savings have been noticed,” says Cline.
During regular maintenance BMEs discovered the boiler was running at 100 per cent capacity, so they turned it down to see if it could still meet demand.
“We thought that was going to save some money, but we didn’t realize how much until we got the report from our client,” says Cline.
He says the decrease in capacity will also extend the life of the boilers, which are a major expense to replace.
Cline believes the decrease in electricity consumption is due to the new speed drives installed on the air handlers that supply the heating, ventilation and air condition (HVAC) to living units.
Speed drives regulate the motor speed on the fans, depending on how much air it’s calling for as indicated by pressure sensors.
The BMEs changed the shifts on the fans to slow them down overnight, which can contribute to the 13.4 per cent reduction in consumption.
Cline says that jails are unique in that they’re large, they’re crowded and they demand energy at all hours of the day and week. Few buildings in his portfolio match those needs.
“It’s different where you’ve got a facility where you’ve got people living 24/7, the fuel consumption and wear and tear on the building is probably triple what it should be on a standard commercial office building,” he says.
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