Elizabeth City State University
At a Glance
Industry
College or University
Project Type
Commercial Energy Efficiency
Year
2010
Location
Elizabeth City, NC
Annual kWh Savings:
369,000 kWh
Annual CO2 Reductions:
190 metric tons
Summary
Tyrone Davis analyzed the energy use at four facilities and made efficiency recommendations.
Goals
Tyrone Davis spent his summer as an EDF Climate Corps fellow at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), a historically black campus in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. ECSU is ahead of many schools with its sustainability committee and plan. Davis set out to help the university reduce its energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through a variety of energy efficiency projects.
Solutions
Davis analyzed the energy usage at four facilities: the Kermit E. White Graduate Center, the Fine Arts facility, the Information Technology Center (ITC) and Bedell Cafeteria. He found potential savings in all the buildings through lighting upgrades, installation of occupation sensors and changes in HVAC settings. Davis created custom energy efficiency projects, notably virtualization technology at the ITC. The center's energy costs are expected to rise as it expands its 50 servers to keep pace with growth. Virtualization would allow many applications and operating systems to run independently on one server. This technology could reduce the number of servers to nine, and lower the center’s energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions and allow for future server capacity. Best of all, the annual savings for this project alone would be over $15,000, and it has a payback period of about two years.
Potential Impact
If all the fellow's project were implemented, ECSU could reduce energy usage about 369,000 kWh, avoid 190 tons of CO2 emissions, and cut energy costs more than $30,000 per year.