West Virginia University
WVU Health Sciences campus drives toward energy efficiency by upgrading lighting systems across 12 facilities to enhance sustainability, reduce costs, and transform their healthcare and research environments.
Forecasted savings over 10 years
Energy savings equivalent to removing this many cars from the road
% reduction of lighting portion of energy bill
Background
For nearly 20 years, Eco Engineering has supported Siemens Building Technologies (SBT) by providing energy-efficient lighting system upgrades as part of more than 50 of their energy savings performance contracts nationally. West Virginia University is a long-tenured SBT client, working with them across a range of mechanical system projects, including lighting. Eco Engineering has designed and installed multiple lighting system upgrade projects for Siemens at West Virginia University. The most recent was at the Health Sciences campus and other ancillary buildings in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Situation
The Health Sciences campus in Morgantown is the largest concentration of health care, research, and health professions resources in the state of West Virginia. It is home to more than 1,000 faculty members and 4,000 students. The University was seeking multiple avenues to make the WVU Medicine hospitals, clinics, and research labs at this campus more energy efficient. Similarly, they wanted to reduce energy costs in a set of facilities on the Evansdale and Downtown campuses by upgrading the lighting systems. In total, 12 facilities across the three campuses were targeted for energy improvements.
Solution
The project was initiated with an investment-grade audit of the lighting systems primarily at the Health Sciences campus in Morgantown. The design and installation strategy entailed maximizing the energy savings by upgrading the lighting systems to LED technology using new fixtures, retrofitted components, and occupancy controls. Siemens Building Technologies partnered with Eco Engineering for the audit, design and implementation phases of the lighting system upgrade and used these energy savings to fund other, necessary and more costly mechanical system upgrades.
Energy Savings
The energy saved from installing the new lighting system is the equivalent of removing 1,048 cars from the road annually. Other benefits from the new lighting system include:
- Equal or better color rendering for increased visual clarity and comfort
- Created a more pleasing and productive work environment
- Eliminated fluorescent ballast noise and lamp flickering
Incentives
Over the next 10 years, the lighting portion of their energy bill will be reduced by 62%.
- Forecasted Energy Savings: $5,700,000 over the next 10 years.