ABOUT
Located in South Central Pennsylvania, Fairfield Area School District is a small, rural public school district serving 1,100 students.
OPPORTUNITY
FASD wanted to save money by turning plug load devices off during nights and weekends when buildings are not occupied.
SOLUTION
250 BERT Smart Plugs with Analysis and Control
RESULTS
Reduction in FASD's overnight standby plug load energy expense.
Fairfield Area School District (FASD) prides itself on providing high-quality education to students while remaining focused on delivering high taxpayer value.
Since money spent on facilities operations or overhead cannot be spent on students, the district seeks efficiencies of every kind. One such area is plug load energy usage. Before BERT®, the district spent $440,000 annually on electricity, of which approximately $100,000 was plug loads. FASD realized plug load control would free up money for extracurricular activities, athletics, and educational supplies.
The district hired Siemens Building Technologies, a performance contracting market leader. Besides implementing major lighting and chiller upgrades and building envelope improvements, Siemens installed BERT devices for plug load control.
Devices such as classroom electronics, break room and office equipment, vending machines, and charging carts consume power 24/7, even when placed in standby mode. BERT eliminates this load by turning devices off during nights, weekends, and holidays when buildings are not in use. This translates into real savings because schools and other commercial buildings are unoccupied many more hours per year than they are open.
BERT is ideal for districts like FASD since their buildings are only occupied about 35 percent of the time. Using BERT, devices are now turned off more than 5,700 hours each year.
At FASD, the plug load devices are organized into logical groups for scheduling purposes. Devices are grouped by building (ES, MS, and HS) and by device type (TVs, projectors, etc.). Once devices are grouped, schedules are applied to the groups. Fairfield created unique schedules for each building because each building has different occupancy hours. Some districts also create summer schedules to turn plug load devices off entirely during summer vacation months for additional savings.
According to Howie Kessel, Director of Buildings and Grounds at FASD, “We’ve taken steps to reduce our heating and cooling costs. Based on the suggestion from Siemens, we’re now able to control our plug loads as well with BERT. We know that cutting power to those devices lowers our electric bill.”
