From his desk at the Duchesne County School District office, Lane Warenski can control the temperature of classrooms, gyms, and auditoriums miles away. Warenski, the district's energy specialist, monitors Duchesne County schools on a daily basis to ensure temperature guidelines are being followed. In the winter, rooms are set at no warmer than 72 degrees. Air conditioning is used only sporadically in the spring and fall, and coolers are set at 74 degrees to 76 degrees. “We keep the scheduling as tight as it possibly can be,” Warenski said. “We turn the heater on just in time to make sure the rooms are warm when the kids get there and turn it off as soon as we can. The more I learn about all of our buildings, the more I can tune in to ways to save money.” Warenski’s vigilant monitoring of room temperatures is at the heart of the school district’s energy program. In April 2007, district officials decided to begin paying a stipend to an energy specialist and sign a contract with a Texas-based consulting firm called Energy Education Inc.
Over the past 3½ years, Warenski said, the district has managed to cut its utility bills by an average of 17 percent and save $576,063 in energy costs. “Those kinds of numbers are without any major capital expenditures,” he said. “The program has been unbelievably successful.” The district’s contract with Energy Education expires in April, Warenski said, and at that point 100 percent of the savings being realized will go back to the district. Since 2007, the district has been paying the consulting firm a monthly stipend of $6,800. And while that price tag seems costly, the contract is revenue neutral — meaning the company promises clients they will realize savings that are at least equal to the annual fees being paid. Even when you take into account monthly consulting fees and a stipend for the energy specialist, the program has saved the district well over $200,000 so far.
One of the major changes the consulting firm initially recommended to help the district save money was rezoning. In the past, many Duchesne County schools were designed with the day in mind as far as utilities went, with large portions of the building using the same heating and air conditioning controls. As a result, when one teacher came in after hours to work on a lesson plan and flipped on the heater, or when one single gym was being used at night for a volleyball game, lights and air-conditioning or heating would also run in much of the school — in rooms that weren’t even being used.
And while rezoning school buildings has allowed the district to reduce the amount of energy it uses, Warenski said the main reason the program has been so successful is the support of district employees. “Energy educators call this a people-based program,” he said. “They expect our focus to be on changing the usage habits of our employees. The program isn’t designed to have major impacts in any one area but to have small impacts in many different areas.”
Another positive for the school district when it comes to potential energy savings is a recently acquired grant, Warenski said. In 20008, officials upgraded East Elementary School with a new digital temperature control system. That improvement resulted in a 30-percent savings for the school from previous years. “Because of our success at that school, we’ve received some energy grant monies that will allow us to install more new controls at Union, Altamont, and Myton,” Warenski said. “ We expect to see even more savings when those projects are done.”
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