The smart building movement is not only for engineers with advanced degrees. It is also for STEM students in grades K-12 who bring the passion of their generation for the green movement to what can often be wonky building automation technology.
At Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, Minnesota, students can access a tech portal to see how their use of six gallons of water and 100 watts of electricity assigned daily to each student will impact a building’s total use of resources. Students can view the energy and water usage on the campus and the individual rooms which has been spun into a friendly competition with tangible graphics showing their daily budgets and usage.
Wolf Ridge won a prestigious Living Building Challenge certification last year from the International Living Future Institute for its renovation of MAC Lodge where resource self-sufficiency was one of several imperatives. The lodge underwent a renovation in previous years that involved 27 contractors.
Schneider Electric provided software and hardware used in the renovation in collaboration with UHL to enable efficient use of energy. Schneider’s EcoStruxure Building Operation (EBO) technology provided Wolf Ridge with a single pane of glass portal for staff and students to view resource usage on the campus and its rooms. HGA was the architect/designer on the project.
The facilities team at Wolf Ridge can use the tool to access building data anytime with smartphones, tablets and laptops. Staff can avoid walking the campus to check 25 different thermostats, for example.
“The proficiency provided to us by UHL and Schneider Electric through EBO is invaluable,” said Pete Smerud, executive director of Wolf Ridge, in a statement. “In addition to giving our staff the tools to quickly and effortlessly maintain our facilities, most importantly, it has empowered our students with tangible metrics, showing how their daily actions can affect the environment.”
The renovated MAC Lodge is 22,000 square feet and can accommodate 180 people, Smerud said. In a 12-month period, the occupants need to use no more than the solar photovoltaic panels create, so engineers projected electrical use with the building unoccupied and came up with the 100 watts per person per day for user-based electricity consumption. In the building lobby and in each room, a display shows total building energy inputs and outputs. "Kids quickly learn that mechanical uses (lighting and refrigeration) comprise a tremendous amount of electricity consumer by the building, often more than user-controlled electrical," he said via email.
"The impact of the user [on electric] is not as dramatic as one might expect," he added. "We proved that if occupants keep their individual electrical usage below the net zero line, thus living net positive, our forecasts of unoccupied building forecasting were accurate. In turn, the entire building remained with overall net positive performance for 12 months."
Schneider also found the MAC Lodge renovation added square footage but did not increase heating demand, allowing it to generate more energy than it consumes. The Living Building Challenge certification would not have been possible without EBO and the expertise of UHL, said Justin Lavoie, vice president of channel development at Schneider.
Lavoie said the Wolf Ridge case study is an example of how net zero greenhouse gas emissions goals matter and can be realized with intelligent building software. “We use net zero as a pillar in our own business and help customers hit sustainability goals,” he said in an interview. “It is extremely important.”
At Wolf Ridge, Schneider and partners addressed daily electricity and water usage. “That’s our daily conversation with customers on how to meet those goals,” he said.
Schneider urges customers to convert buildings to use “electrification across the board,” Lavoie added. “Sixty percent of energy is in buildings right now and we have to reduce it by 35%. As we continue to look at buildings, they need to be more electric and more digital.”
RELATED: How Intel plans to reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2040