City of Orlando

At a Glance

Industry

Government/Public Administration

Project Types

Clean and Renewable Energy, Data Analysis, Goals/Targets, Supply Chain, Sustainability and Energy Management Strategy

Year

2020

Location

Orlando, FL

Summary

Hardik Pokhrel supported City of Orlando in the development of their expanded 2030 clean energy roadmap, along with providing enhanced strategy on resilience, emission tracking and resource efficiency.

Goals

City of Orlando has set a goal of powering 100 percent of its municipal operations with renewable energy by 2030 and is focusing on minimizing resource consumption. The City enlisted Hardik Pokhrel to support on these goals and assist in the development an expanded 2030 clean energy roadmap for on-site solar across its municipal facilities. Hardik also focused his fellowship on collecting and analyzing data for the City’s annual GHG inventory, conducting the City’s first in-depth water consumption analysis, and investigating a potential pilot project for the use flow-battery-powered microgrids at community centers.

Solutions

Hardik approached the challenge with following process:

  • Deriving solar estimates of all facilities using the Google SunRoof for preliminary estimates and Helioscope tool for detailed design, engaging city’s construction division and EPC contractors to derive a revised selection matrix for candidate buildings and calculating potential offsets.

  • Organizing and sorting the solar feasibility of all City facilities into four categories, based on factors such as offset potential, to develop a customized strategy of decarbonization. This allowed for model to capture environmental justice lens, so all districts had equitable access to clean energy.

  • Revising the list of potential sites proposed with other recommendations for upcoming year prioritized by the best candidate sites, based on new model of selection.

 

Another focus was providing support on the City's effort to inventory  GHG emission levels including developing frameworks on aviation for data tracking, as well as conducting an in-depth analysis of high water-consuming facilities identified through benchmarking on BuildingOS, city’s resource management platform.

Impact

Using the new selection matrix, Hardik was able to recommend alternate sites with higher potential with increased offset of 1.2 GWh annual electricity consumption for FY21. This offset equated to the mitigation 515 MT of CO2 emissions across three municipal sites proposed based on the selection model developed.

Additional, Hardik was able to provide a prioritized list of six candidate sites for the potential flow batteries pilot. 

In terms of his analysis on water consumption, Hardik provided site-specific recommendations to the City’s Facilities team, which could lead to potential savings for >2 million gallons savings per month.  

 

 

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