Overview:

The University of Utah (“U”) is a public university founded in 1850 with a world class medical school and research facilities, a top-notch law school and a leading edge technology research and development effort. U graduates have made major contributions in many fields of endeavor including technology, the arts, medicine, and business. 23,789 undergraduate students and 8,071 graduate students occupy approximately 400 buildings on a campus situated in the beautiful foothills looking over historic Salt Lake City.  Environmentally responsible, the U has implemented many measures to improve energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint.

Services:

Since 2009, Summa Energy Solutions has provided a number of different services, including, measurement and verification of implemented energy projects, utility metering design and implementation as well as turn-key metering services.  Summa has also overseen the implementation of a custom version of the VITALITY system that provides vital energy metrics to the Energy Management Department as well as enabling a robust utility sub-billing function that allows specific allocation of energy costs across the many campus buildings and departments.

Project Details:

Over 1,000 meters

Complex Energy Network

Multiple Systems.

On-Going Services:

Summa Energy Solutions helps maintain the function and data accuracy of over one-thousand meters that have been installed across the campus.  This includes hardware maintenance and troubleshooting, verification of programming points and oversight of new construction.  Recently, Summa has helped transition key metering connection points and data acquisition from the existing Building Automation System (BAS) to a more comprehensive Data Acquisition Server (DAS) to improve data integrity and reduce network problems that have grown as the metering network has expanded to current proportions.

*Data included in the Overview paragraphs was derived from the University of Utah website and other University sources.

Services Provided:

Programming.

Commissioning

Measurement & Verification

Metering Design.

Turn-Key Metering.

Features:

Utility Sub-Billing by Department with Energy

Measurement & Verification

Overview:

The University of Central Oklahoma (“Central”) was founded in 1890 as one of the state’s first institutions of higher learning.

Central's appealing 210-acre main campus offers a learning and living environment that is a source of pride for the Central community. Central is ranked among the top public regional universities in the nation by US News and World Report, and has been named as one of the top universities to work for by the Chronicle of Higher Education five of the past six years.

Scope:

In support of Central’s green practices, Summa Energy Solutions was asked to design and implement a campus-wide energy management system.  The design specs for this system included the ability to perform measurement and verification (M&V) of newly implemented energy conservation measures and to perform building by building utility sub-billing, allowing Central to allocate utility costs and cost savings to the various departments across campus.

Summa Energy designed an energy management platform for power and natural gas consumption.  Meters installed in over 40 buildings across the campus were to push data to a centralized system with an easy to use and easy to understand display format (dashboard).  With only two main utility feeds, Central was completely unable to verify energy consumption data with any meaningful granularity. Two reports, one from each feed, were the best they could do, and those were limited to monthly totals.

Project Scope:

Power & Gas Metering In over 40 locations

Project Cost:

Approx. $225,000.

Features:

Solution:

Summa began by performing an onsite audit of the current metering infrastructure.  After identifying appropriate metering locations and creating an inventory of what was already in place, Summa created stamped construction drawings for a complete energy management system.  After the installation of the metering hardware was completed, Summa programmed and commissioned the metering infrastructure to guarantee data integrity.  Summa then implemented the VITALITY energy management platform for the ability to display an integrated picture of the energy data being collected.  With the Summa Vitality system, Central now has over 40 M&V points with the ability to add as many more as they might ever deem necessary.  Central also uses VITALITY to do utility sub-billing for all appropriate university departments.

Utility Sub-Billing by Department with Energy Measurement & Verification

Overview:

After the implementation of a full scale energy management system at the college, Summa Energy Solutions continued to monitor the energy consumption of the college through the Vitality platform. It quickly became apparent to Summa as well as to the college energy manager that they had per-existing peak demand issues.

Problem:

Vitality was able to demonstrate that the college’s “resting” KW peak demand was around 750 KW; yet the college was being billed at a peak demand of over 1,000 KW. Summa continued to monitor the KW and quickly noticed that the peak demand was happening consistently every night at a very specific time.

Overview:

The University of Texas Medical Branch (“UTMB”) established in 1891 as the University of Texas Medical Department, has grown from one building, 23 students and 13 faculty members to a modern health science center with more than 70 major buildings, more than 2,500 students and more than 1,000 faculty. Since its founding, UTMB has grown into what is now a major academic health sciences center of global influence, with medical, nursing,

health professions and graduate biomedical schools; a world-renowned research enterprise; and a growing, comprehensive health system with

The Challenge:

Meters had already been installed in various locations around campus by another vendor but the UTMB Energy Manager had reason to believe that the existing meters were not providing an accurate picture of what was really taking place. Most notably, the data being provided did not agree with the information provided on their utility bills. Consequently, Summa Energy was asked to perform an audit and identify the cause or causes of those inconsistencies.

Project Cost:

Issues Found:

16 Utility Meters

Approx. $26,000

Solution:

Summa Energy Solutions corrected the hardware installation issues and then re-programmed the meters to provide the correct data.  Summa commissioned a Data Acquisition Server (“DAS”) to handle all meter data collection and transmission, removing that load from the Building Automation System. The Summa solution fixed the meter data integrity issues while allowing the BAS to do its job unhindered by the meter data load.  Altogether, these changes turned a system that was essentially non-functional into a trustworthy energy monitoring system that is now providing accurate utility billing verification and other benefits to the UTMB Energy Manager.