Ecologue

For your reading pleasure, I’m posting contents from the the January 2010 edition of the Sustainability at OSU Update.  For more information about the update, and to subscribe, please visit this Ecologue post.

From our friends at Campus Recycling

Recyclemania has Begun – Pitch In to Win!

Recyclemania is a 10-week, nationwide recycling competition between universities which started on January 17^th and runs until the end of spring break. OSU will compete for highest per capita recycling, per capita compost, total recyclables, and recycling rate. Pitch in by recycling everything possible and spreading the word. More info, including upcoming events and weekly results, are online – http://recycle.oregonstate.edu/recyclemania/

The 2010 Building Energy Challenge takes off Monday, February 1!  The occupants of ALS, Bexell, Milam, Moreland, Wilkinson and the Women’s Building are vying for prizes and glory while striving to make their buildings more energy efficient.  Beyond what they usually do, building occupants will turn off lights and computers, replace incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), and shut off equipment at night in an attempt to reduce February electricity use at least 5% below the baseline for the month.  Not in a participating building?  You can still play a part!  Look around your space for ways to save energy and get your building involved when the Challenge returns in 2011!  For more information, see the Building Energy Challenge website : http://oregonstate.edu/sustainability/building-energy-challenge-winter-2010.

Sustainability Course Lists

Did you know that in a 2009 report, the Institute for Natural Resources found that OSU offered over 350 different courses that emphasize sustainability at OSU’s main campus in Corvallis, online, and at the Cascades and Hatfield campuses? These courses attempt to link the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability.  The Sustainability Office and the Student Sustainability Initiative are working together to update and make available the course list using processes that meet STARS criteria (see below).  Consistent with these criteria, courses will be designated “sustainability related” or “sustainability focused” and vetted by a team of faculty, staff and students.  We’re looking for help, particularly faculty interested in serving on the evaluation team.  The time commitment is not expected to be extensive.  Please contact brandon.trelstad@oregonstate.edu to get involved, and see the current lists at http://oregonstate.edu/sustainability/courses

OSU to Utilize New Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has developed over the last several years a self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to gauge relative progress toward sustainability.  Much like the LEED green building rating system, STARS assigns points in categories which aggregate to an overall score.  The course lists project (previous story) is an example of how the Sustainability Office has been preparing for several months for STARS; we expect it to be the next wave of engagement in sustainability for higher ed.  We’re looking for people interested in serving on small evaluation teams.  The time commitment is minimal.  Contact Brandon to get involved, and visit http://stars.aashe.org/.

After a fair amount of fine tuning, I’m pleased to report that we’ve worked out an arrangement with Enterprise’s WeCar division that will bring car sharing to OSU.

What is “car sharing” you may ask?  It’s similar to an hourly rental.  Members can make a reservation online, walk up to the car with a member card which unlocks the car.  Ignition keys are inside, ready to go.  When your trip is done, simply return the car to the same spot, return keys to the glove box and hold your card over the windshield from outside the car to check out.

Gas, maintenance and – for most drivers – insurance are covered in the hourly rates.

Our friends to the south at UO started this a few months ago.  So before we get the marketing materials and website ready for OSU, you can find some details at UO’s site – our rates will be the same.  Check the WeCar site for remaining details.

The cars should be here and the OSU web portal functional by mid-late February.  Our two cars, both Toyota Prius, will be located near the corner of 26th and Jefferson, near the Memorial Union.  Look for announcements around then, and contact me if you have other questions!

Brandon

In an effort to expand the sustainability conversation to a wider and more diverse audience, the Sustainability Office has started two related programs targeted specifically at OSU faculty and staff.

First, in an effort to support wider awareness of campus resources, a newly-created listserv will distribute information that highlights sustainability activities at OSU.  While similar resources exist for students, there has been no central email list of faculty and staff with similar interests.  Faculty and staff are encouraged to sign up, and should expect, on average, 2 emails per month.  Topics will include:

• Significant recognition or awards received by the university
• Events and resources that connect employee peers
• Case studies and other means to share best practices between departments
• Resources to share with students

In an effort to stay focused and minimize excessive email, the listserv will be moderated.  However, subscribers can help shape the conversation by suggesting topics of interest or sending content directly to us.  Subscribers are also invited to give feedback on how the listserv might better be used.  Please subscribe today or contact us and we’ll get you on the list.

The second program is the new Sustainability Advocates team we’re building.  Advocates serve as their campus unit’s sustainability representative, and as the liaison with the Sustainability Office, Campus Recycling and similar groups.  Advocates will be asked to attend quarterly or semi-annual meetings where they can engage in fun and informative conversations with peers with similar interests.

The Advocates’ role will also mesh nicely with the existing Building Managers role, although you don’t have to be a building manager to be a Sustainability Advocate.  We’re looking for anyone with a personal passion – not necessarily a professional duty – to help get their campus unit organized to address sustainability-related issues.  Sign up and help be the champion in your unit!

Participants of either program will be made aware of periodic funding opportunities and new incentive programs from Facilities Services, the Student Sustainability Initiative and others.  Don’t miss out…

Our students are OSU’s greatest resource. Not only because they are the future, but also because they are intensely interested in how the campus is operated.

Due to this ever-increasing interest, the Sustainability Office has begun a series of pilot partnerships with various academic units. In these partnerships, we offer students an opportunity for service, experiential learning and research at a location central to their lives: campus. In return, Facilities receives assistance with projects, potential new funding sources, and stronger relationships with campus units. Currently, Sustainability Office academic partnerships include:

- An energy conservation study at Rogers Hall, with Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (MIME) students ;
- A web-based energy ‘dashboard’ for real-time building energy use, with Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS);
- Preliminary green roof design, cost and maintenance analysis for Kelley Engineering, with Environmental Science (ENSC);
- Various service learning projects with ENSC 101 and GEO 300.

If you would like to form or enhance a partnership between an academic unit and the Sustainability Office or another Facilities Services’ department, please contact Greg or Brandon.

I’ve been asked a few times by administrators to investigate what energy savings OSU might see if we shifted to a 4 day workweek (each day 10 hours).  I don’t plan on posting my rather lengthy response here unless someone requests it.  But the short answer is, there is indeed some net energy savings potential from the 4 day week, although there are also some potential costs that are hard to quantify.

The brief review I conducted in May of this year led me to believe a 4-day work week would result in savings in utility costs of between 3-5%.  I was reminded of my investigation by a post on National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology Blog.  There, they revisited efforts in the State of Utah to shift to a shortened work week.  Utah estimates savings of $1.8 million in utility costs, although this is short of the $3 million they hoped to save.  However, just like the costs of the shift, there are savings that are difficult to quantify, such as employee morale and attendance improvement.

What do you think OSU should do?  Would you prefer a 4 day work week, or are you working one already?  Comment online.

The new OSU Sustainability website went live moments ago, and we’re still working through some issues and have some minor cleanup/fixing to do over the next few days, so please bear with us!

Along with much of OSU, we made the switch to using Drupal to maintain and expand our website.  Honestly, I was reluctant to make the switch because of loss of customization and increased difficulty of some basic tasks.  We had several conversations with experts and between Dustin, Greg and myself, and decided the pros outweighed the cons.

What plan to use Drupal’s powerful collaborative elements that allow a wide variety of “ownership” over a site and its contents.  There is so much going on related to sustainability at OSU – we needed a content management-focused solution in order to advance our electronic outreach.

And I’m looking for contributors.  Contact me if you want to become a website contributor and share information about your involvement with sustainability at OSU.

Hello everybody,
For the past seven years, the Society for College and University Planning has planned a major webcast in October, when many colleges and universities celebrate their sustainability initiatives. I’m particularly excited about the program this year, because of the cross-section of panelists, and the program moderator is Andy Revkin, science editor for The New York Times. The annual Campus Sustainability Day webcast will be held on Wednesday, October 21, from 10:00 – 11:30 Pacific time. Here’s a link for more details:
http://www.scup.org/page/profdev/notravel/2009/csd/7

We’ll be filming and streaming the program out of The New York Times building, and we hope that schools will participate and project the program for a large group. We’ll be taking text questions throughout the program. We’ve tried to keep the site fee as low as we could, and hope that some of you will be able to join the program.

On another note, our international conference was in Portland this past July. With presenters from colleges and universities across Oregon, and the emphasis on sustainability in our program topic line-up – we had one of the best conferences in the last few years. Thank you all for your time!

Kathy Benton
Associate Director / Education & Product Development
Society for College and University Planning

Who doesn’t like upgrades? We sure do, especially when the final result allows us to spend less time and effort with maintenance. Enter our new website, backed by Drupal. I am moving right along with converting our website into a more user (and management) friendly version. With some delays, I hope to have the new site rolling out of the garage in the next few weeks. In the meantime my increasingly obvious lack of knowledge of computer programming and site organization will continue to get in the way, anyone want to take over for me? Some of the features that I’m working on with the new site are a more aesthetically pleasing layout, a few more pages to provide more info for you sustainability hounds, easier navigation, and an uncontrollable urge to be happy as you peruse the new site absorbing sustainability knowledge. Although I’m trying to work out the bugs to stop people from being so happy while perusing, I might just have to roll out the site without solving that problem. Until the site is available to you, if there have been any things you’ve been dying to see on our site, please let me know, send me a comment . Once the site is finished, please let me know of any issues or thoughts you have with it.

Today, May 13, marks the middle of a two week OSU test to see how much energy – electricity specifically – can be saved by wider implementation of computer power management settings.

While it may seem pretty trivial to look at powering down computers and monitors when not in use, the savings add up.  While we are still waiting for numbers to come in from our test, estimates based on others’ implementation of stricter power management settings point to savings of $15-$35 per year per computer.  Multiply that by the many thousands of computers at OSU, and the business case starts to look pretty good.

The OSU test, prompted by the Sustainability Office but refined and led by Steve Fowler of OSU’s Technology Support Services group,  involves several practices and products.  Two of the software solutions include the Verdiem company’s Surveyor product, and EPA’s  Energy Star EZ GPO.  These will be compared to “default” power management settings that are put on machines as they are built by OSU’s largest computer support entity, Community Network.

Part of the reason for testing include evaluating true costs (which include support staff time) and taking a close look at impact on users.  A successful test will minimize or eliminate interruptions to end users.

The test was a long time in coming, but we’re ending up with a very robust analysis thanks to Steve and others, including CN and Facilities Services Specialized Application Support group.

Thanks to these groups for their support in moving OSU toward higher efficiency and lower carbon emissions!

With apologies for the gap between blog entries, I thought it might be time to write a little (or a lot) more about the installation of “human power” harvesting at our Dixon Recreation Center.

The press coverage OSU received as a result of this innovative installation exceeded even my expectations, and responses have been overwhelmingly positive.  Many have called or written me for more information and details about the vendor, the equipment and how it’s all working out.  I have not had time to respond individually to each inquiry, so my hope is that this longer response might serve to answer all the common – and some of the uncommon – questions.  Also, please post questions to this blog rather than emailing me and I will respond here; I’ve received many similar questions, so it would be great to share the responses with everyone.

The basics. The system is comprised of just a few key components: 22 elliptical exercise machines, 2 inverters, AC and DC wiring, and a display computer. The ReRev technology is in the inverters, which act much like solar inverters in that they take DC power generated by the elliptical machines and convert it to AC power that is fed back onto the utility grid. This building, like most, consumes far more electricity even “idling” than these 22 units will ever produce, so all the power generated is consumed on site in that facility.  We do have expansion capability, however, of up to 40 machines with the existing inverters, and we wired to add at least one more inverter eventually.

Each elliptical machine can generate up to 400 watts with a beefy user at a full sprint.  Even the best athletes couldn’t maintain that output for long.  Most users operate the machines at lower-than-we-expected resistance levels, which is contributing to a bit less output than we expected (more details on this below).

Getting it done. Installation went very smoothly thanks to our great Rec Sports staff and their contracted electricians Cherry City Electric, the vendor ReRev and Pacific Power, the local electrical provider.  Pacific Power was great in working with this clearly out of the box request.  The actual install only took a few days, with some tidying up over a few more days.

Part of the beauty of this system is the simplicity.  Because the elliptical machines come from the factory with DC generation capacity (that’s what provides the programmable, variable resistance for your workout) no modifications to the exercise equipment were necessary.  In the factory setup, DC current that provides resistance is burned off – literally – in small ceramic heaters inside each machine.  Not so wise to create heat in exercise facilities that need a lot of annual cooling, eh?  Rather than running heat-making resisters, DC wiring is run from the ellipticals to ReRev’s special inverters, and AC wiring connects the inverters to a building electrical panel.  We ended up with a nice, clean installation with a little help from under floor conduit.

Funding and cost. Funding for the project came from three sources: a grant from the Energy Trust of Oregon, from the OSU Student/Incidental Fees Committee – a student body governing student fee rates and how that money is spent, and from the Recreational Sports department.  Total project cost was in the $17-19k range.

A few people have asked if they could set this up in their homes.   Technically, yes, but it would be very expensive for one or two exercise machines.  Maybe we should suggest that ReRev create a mini inverter? Maybe they’re working on one already…?

Performance and expectations. As mentioned, installation went smoothly and we have a clean install but output is not quite there yet.  When you’re one of a kind, you have to learn as you go, and that’s what we plan to do.  We are a research university, after all!

Regarding output, we are seeing per machine production in the 15-40 watt range, with some peaks much higher.  But sadly, short duration peaks are not where you make much energy (this is the difference between kilowatts and kilowatt-hours).  We would like to see sustained outputs in the 50 watt range to be closer to our expectations.  I should point out, however, that this is the largest installation of it’s kind in the world – at this level of innovation, our original targets were guesses in the dark.  Nowhere else are these machines interacting with so many others.  We are working with the vendor and will continue until we have tried tweaking every possible aspect to get maximum electrical output.  I will update this blog and the sustainability website as we learn more.

Payback and benefits. I’ve received a lot of questions about the “payback” for this project.  Strictly financially, it’s not great.  Even accounting for building air conditioning (cooling) savings plus the expected electrical output, financial break-even is over 20 years.  But it’s is similar to many energy technologies during early stages of development.  This technology is not unlike photovoltaic, which faces large financial hurtles but is still recognized as one of the biggest players as a renewable energy solution for the future.  A university environment where innovation is fostered makes for the perfect living laboratory for wacky things like inverters hooked to exercise machines.  And for the technology to be perfected.

Remember, conservation is almost always the cheapest way to reduce energy costs and environmental impact.  And even though this is not a conservation project, I think it will have a significant conservation impact.  In what other way can you equate your sweat volumes to one of the dozens of everyday uses of electrical power?  How long do you have to pedal to run your iPod all day, or to watch TV for an hour?  (Flat panel or CRT TV?)  How much extra time to have to stay on the machine to “pay for” those extra five minutes of hot water in the shower this morning?

As my friend Jan Schaeffer from the Energy Trust said, “This gives you a whole new relationship with a kilowatt hour.”

My hope is that this new relationship fosters awareness in the non-choir – the masses who haven’t thought about their energy consumption much until now.  If in that way OSU’s productive ellipticals reach even a few people, the return will outlast and out-reach this fun little project.