Reducing a university's carbon footprint

Energy efficiency tends to make the news today more and more frequently. Businesses are becoming more focused on cutting carbon footprint, and not just for the PR value, but due to real savings which can be realized through implementing greener tactics. Matt Worsham, from the University of Dayton, works as the school’s energy efficiency and renewable energy manager.

“We have about 750 residences that we manage. And that's a mix of houses and apartments that are spread out between our North and our South student neighborhoods, which cover a pretty wide area. As a university, we've committed to achieving carbon neutrality...and we're always looking for new opportunities to reduce energy consumption and save carbon emissions and save money for the university.”

“We would like to reduce our impact on the environment and on society as well as set an example for how we can become a more sustainable society.” 

“Prior to using Sensi Multiple Thermostat Manager, we used standard thermostats for these houses and apartments that controlled anything from gas furnaces to heat pumps to air conditioning. We have a wide variety of HVAC systems in our residences.”

Previously, the school relied on standard programmable thermostats. “The user had wide range of freedom over what temperatures to choose. But more importantly, we had no feedback on how those were being used or when there were problems with the thermostat or with HVAC system, our maintenance didn't have a way to identify problems and act proactively to fix them.”

“Without any sort of insight into or oversight of what those thermostats were doing, we found we were using a lot of energy even during the summertime when the students weren't living in the house.”

With these limitations, Dayton turned to Sensi and began installing thermostats throughout the campus. “Most of the cost of the project was covered by our local utility rebates. So we had very little out of pocket costs for the project.”

After installing over 500 thermostats, Matt began using the thermostats to react to peak load curves, essentially using Sensi MTM to manage their demand response program at the University.

“Multiple Thermostat Manager has essentially given us a low cost building management system for all of our residential properties. So this has given us a huge advantage in our goals to monitor, control, and save energy in these properties that we manage.”