Power down and save
February 20, 2011
The Power Plant turbine went back online Friday, Feb. 11 at about 6 p.m. It cost us about $20,000 more per day to purchase power from Golden Valley Electric Association for the four days the turbine was down.
I'd like thank you for conserving energy during the turbine outage and ask you to continue to look for ways to save. Our electricity needs at UAF exceed our power generation capacity and each year we purchase 10 to 15 percent of our electricity from GVEA.
UAF is taking advantage of a new Alaska Housing Finance Corporation energy audit and upgrade program to review energy use on selected Fairbanks and remote campus buildings, prioritize conservation projects and construct the most promising ones. We plan to have the audits completed by December 2011 and the first conservation projects underway in the spring of 2012.
In addition, we'll be taking the coal-fired boilers and main turbine off-line for planned maintenance this spring from from April 1 to May 31. This eight-week period is expected to cost the campus more than $1 million in purchased electricity. Please take the time to survey your department to determine ways to conserve during this time, review the energy saving tips below and share your ideas. The Office of Sustainability will also be getting information out to the campus leading up to the planned maintenance period.
Reducing energy usage on campus:
Take the stairs
Try to take the stairs rather than the lift, at least for when you are going up one level or down two. As well as saving energy, it's also a great way to help get fit and healthy.
Lights
Please consider switching off lights in the following situations:
you are the last to leave a communal room
you leave your office for more than 15 minutes
there is sufficient daylight for you to work in
Computers and electrical equipment
Turn the brightness of your LCD computer monitor down to 50 percent (or as close to that as is comfortable).
Ensure that the standby/sleep/suspend function has been enabled on your computer. This can more than halve the power used by a computer overnight compared with just logging off. To change the power management features in Windows XP go to the control panel, select 'power options' and select the 'power schemes' tab. Choose the minimum power management scheme. Then select the 'turn off monitor' option to a shorter time, say 10 minutes. If practicable, shut down your computer over night.
Unplug all external devices (e.g., for ipods, cameras, phones, batteries) when not in use.
Turn off all energy consuming office and research equipment when not in use, e.g., copiers, refrigerators, environmental rooms, fume hoods, etc.
Scott Bell is the associate vice chancellor for facilities services and a 1982 graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.