Wallingford Energy Committee Minutes**These are unofficial Minutes subject to the approval at the next regular meeting. November 1, 2011Attendees: Chris Dinnan, Joyce Barbieri, Doug Blodgett, Ken
Welch, Jay White, Ralph Nimtz, Bert Jones, Jack Tally, Anna Tally, guest –
Penny Lienhardt - WES Previous minutes approved – (minutes to be distributed and
Julie will place on the town website). Discussion on a myriad of topics followed: Ken has been unsuccessful in garnering a contractor for work
in the Town Hall. Button–up workshop Input: – About 18
people attended and it went reasonably well. Jack would like more info. on
LED’s. WES Energy Use/Audit: Our committee feels there are lots of potential energy savings
here and we’d like to help WES improve its energy efficiency and have students
become involved in this effort. Penny explained that she is totally open to suggestions and
the students are aware/conscious of energy use but that the issue of the school
budget is challenging to make all of the appropriate changes to improve
efficiency. The maintenance budget of the school has been hit hard. The big
issue is $$$$$$$. The committee believed that a thermal audit of the school is a
good place to start. (The focus of the existing audit is electrical.) Ralph asked about busing and fuel use issues – Penny
explained that the scheduling, etc. involving mixing of different aged students,
athletic events, etc. decreases efficiency of the transportation network. The committee asked Penny to find out what recent efficiency
work has been done if any and she agreed to do that.
We also inquired as to how available and current the energy use figures
for the school are. Have there been significant changes from a few years ago ?
Bert said he had some old figures of approx. 18,000 gals. of heating oil use in
(some?) past year. We felt we should also obtain better figures of electrical
use. Could the school have school
have a conservation watchdog at school or perhaps utilize students for that?
Could we use the students to help generate interest in “the heat squad”? We
discussed demand peaks and how threshold demands play a significant role in
energy costs. We talked about numerous other alternatives including solar, PV,
gas on demand particularly for the schools oversized hot water tank.
In addition the gym lights are a big energy user. We’ll keep Penny in
the loop. Ken proposed that the WEC begin to flesh out details on an
approach to an efficiency plan for WES and keep Penny in the loop. Penny will
get some energy use figures (thermal and electric) from RSSU. Bert will go to
the school and look at the gym lights and the hot water situation as well. Other: Jay represented the committee on energy code enforcement –
State energy codes – residential and commercial are supposed to be self
regulating – contractors aren’t compiling. Discussion as to towns doing that
compliance, about 3% compliance overall – trying to get to 90 %.
Ken says we should try to get our folks to different energy meetings. Jack and Anna are interested in joining WEC. Ken will tell
Julie to put their names in front of the Selectboard.
Joyce is going to find out what category we’re in as a committee. Adjourn. |
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