JACKSON – Board of Education members heard an update on energy efficiency programs during a recent meeting that outlined the cost savings the school district has been receiving.
The district’s energy specialist, John Blair provided a video presentation during the virtual meeting stating this was the fourth year of the program. He noted that of the New Jersey schools certified for energy efficiency, Jackson stood out for having four schools in the district that have been certified four years in a row by Sustainability for New Jersey Certified Schools
“Three of our schools are actually silver certified and to put that into perspective, there are only 19 silver certified schools in the entire state of New Jersey and three of them are right here in Jackson,” Blair said.
Blair then moved on to discuss what was happening behind the scenes with the energy program during the last year. He began with the shutdown of the schools in March due to the coronavirus health crisis. “A lot of people ask me did we save any money during that time?”
Showing a graph of electricity consumption and demand Blair added, “from March all the way until June you can see our consumption had gone down during that period. In June when all the employees came back to work and at the same time, we put the air conditioning on. You can see we definitely took advantage of that time,” Blair said.
“There was no reason to run everything when the buildings were empty. We actually shut the heat off at 4 in the afternoon because no one was in the buildings afterwards,” Blair added noting to Board members the savings realized during those months.
“There were no classroom lights on during this period. It was also the beginning of the ESIP (Energy Savings Improvement Program) so we already had the LED lights installed so that had a lot to do with it as well,” Blair said adding that he had averaged the amount of the bills of the last four years. “How did this March go in comparison to the typical March.
Blair added, that “many of our meters were inside the buildings so we were getting several estimated bills in our larger accounts like the Fine Arts building and what happens is you end up paying the demand charge from the previous year which is not good so we really had to stay on top of things at that time.”
He said that during the summer for the fourth year in a row the district participated in the demand response program with PJM. During fiscal year 2019-20 “we received checks in the amount of $71,000 and since 2017 this program has brought in $275,000 in the last four years. Blair said this upcoming year we are on track to get about $86,000 and the district has been shopping around for its utilities including a gas contract. “Unfortunately, our electric supplier that we were using stopped their contract. They basically went out of business so we had to shop around for a new supplier.”
“Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of the market right now and so our price for electricity went up by a little over a penny. If we did nothing that would have cost us about two cents more so instead of 8.2 cents we would be spending close to 10 cents,” Blair said.
Blair said the district signed up for a two year commitment for that “because we are hoping the market will change over the next couple of years. We are in the construction phase of a $26 million ESIP project. What this does is we are able to make some building upgrades that have a net zero cost to the taxpayer because of the savings that are generated by these upgrades.”
Highlights of that work included new boilers in several schools, LED lighting with motion sensors in the classroom and updated control systems. Blair’s presentation showed the differences in the lighting that would be provided with the upgrades.
“It is much brighter and brings out more color in the room and is one sixth of the cost. We will also be installing 4.3 megawatts of solar power and this will save us approximately $360,000 a year. This is also the carbon equivalent of removing 611 cars from the road for one year,” Blair said.
Blair presented some estimates of savings noting in a comparison of what was spent prior to entering into the ESIP program. “It has gone down every year and if you add up all the savings you have $2.3 million or a 19% reduction in cost.”
