The Daleville City School System in Daleville, Ala., is implementing $571,000 in facility enhancements designed to improve operations, comfort, and efficiency at its three school buildings containing more than 216,000 square feet. The Energy Solutions division of TAC, the building automation business unit of Schneider Electric, will complete the work as a performance contract with the district. TAC guarantees that the Daleville City Schools will reduce utility costs by $34,000 annually when the project is completed in September 2009.

The Daleville City School System serves approximately 1,500 students in grades K-12. Many are dependents of military and civilian personnel assigned to the United States Army Aviation Center at nearby Fort Rucker.

“Our schools contained outdated and malfunctioning lighting, creating dark hallways at the middle and high schools,” said Andrew Kelley, superintendent of the Daleville City School System. “To be able to save on our energy bill and to improve our lighting throughout the system is a win-win for Daleville City Schools. Plus, TAC stands behind their commitment with a written guarantee.”

Performance contracting offers improved facility efficiency, occupant comfort, financial management, and environmental protection. Typically, new, more efficient equipment and upgraded facility automation systems maximize energy efficiency and generate utility savings. TAC guarantees the amount of savings that performance-contracting projects will achieve and agrees to pay the difference if that amount is not realized.

TAC will resolve the problems at the Daleville Schools campuses with a variety of energy conservation measures, such as installing a district-wide energy management system (EMS) to control mechanical systems on each campus. Using the EMS, operators will be able to monitor, manage, and even troubleshoot problems from a single location. The various lighting issues will require TAC to retrofit existing T12 fluorescent fixtures with T8 lamps and electronic ballasts and retrofit high-intensity discharge fixtures in the gymnasium with high-bay fluorescent fixtures equipped with T8 lamps and electronic ballasts. TAC will also replace light fixtures in the high school and middle school hallways.

The combined middle and high school building required a redesign of the hallway lighting. Originally, the halls received natural light though a strip of windows on each side of the space and from T12 fixtures placed 18 feet apart. Later, the windows were enclosed, making the hallways very dark. TAC’s solution is to replace the existing T12 fixtures with a T8 lamp designed to produce 360 degrees of light, to fill in the gaps between the fixtures. This will brighten the hallways without adding additional load to the school’s energy usage.

The Daleville gym was plagued with dark spots, caused by the directional distribution of the light from recessed HID lamps, and frequent blackouts in the middle of games and classes when the lamps overheated and turned off. TAC will replace these fixtures with high-bay, T8 fluorescents. These fixtures will use less energy and produce brighter, evenly distributed light through out the gym.

“Students and staff at Daleville Schools will enjoy a better learning and working environment as a result of these facility updates,” said Shon Anderson, vice president of sales, TAC Energy Solutions. “They will no longer have a dark gym and hallways, and the EMS will enable facility operators to keep the spaces in each school comfortable throughout the year.”

Publication date: 08/03/2009