Three Facilities projects have received Focus on Efficiency Awards given by the California Higher Education Collaborative Conference Committee, which recognizes programs at California’s community colleges, California State University, and University of California campuses that demonstrate innovate practices that improve operational performance, services, and outcomes for California higher education.
The UCSF projects focused on three areas:
- Developing a system to track the sources of electricity at UCSF.
- Replacing old, energy hog, ultra-low temperature freezers with energy efficient freezers.
- Developing a systematic approach to monitoring alarms that control UCSF’s heating and cooling systems.
Utilities Analyst Barak Albeg worked to develop the power mix dashboard to track the sources of electricity at UCSF. “We receive electricity from several different providers across more than 100 buildings,” he said. “Year-over-year, the power mix of each supplier changes. As a result, it has been challenging and difficult to track where the power is coming from.”
The Power Mix Dashboard is a dynamic visualization tool developed to provide transparency and insight into the diverse sources of electricity that power UCSF’s facilities. The project, which was undertaken by the Energy & Water team at Facilities, aims to create a 10-year trend visualization of UCSF's electricity supply fuel mix, emphasizing the shift towards more sustainable energy sources.
“This new dashboard allows UCSF to track its decarbonization journey and easily compare campus electrical supplies against the state’s power mix as well as the nation’s power mix,” Albeg said.
Energy Program Manager, John Rosendo, said UCSF has a large fleet of Ultra Low Temperature (ULT) freezers (photographed above) used in research labs that use a significant amount of electricity. “Our project inventoried all freezers and developed a statistical model to help identify UCSF’s most energy intensive ULT freezers and we replaced them with Energy Star models that use two-thirds less energy than your standard ULT,” he said. “The program replaced 43 old, inefficient, freezers with 41 Energy Star certified ULT freezers reducing energy use and cost, while proactively protecting valuable research materials.”
Rosendo said the program was a partnership between Facilities Services, Supply Chain Management, the Office of Sustainability, and the School of Pharmacy. “Based on the success of this pilot, UCSF is starting a new phase of this effort which aims to replace 300 freezers over the next two years,” he said.
Assistant Director of Building Commissioning and Automation, James Comte, developed a systematic approach to managing the alarm systems that remotely monitor and control building heating and cooling systems.
“Alarms are set up to notify facilities when things are not operating correctly, but if alarms are not set up well or come in too frequently, it can quickly become overwhelming,” he said. “With a large campus and enough building generating thousands of alarms, it was apparent that we needed a more systematic approach.”
The alarm management initiative set out to do the following tasks:
- Apply modern data analysis tools to identify and eliminate high frequency and nuisance alarms.
- Develop a standard so new buildings will have less alarms but actionable ones.
- Change the workflow of alarm response so the problems are documented and resolved in a systematic manner.
“Utilizing our Building Management System, we’ve shifted to a proactive approach to identify components that need repair to minimize disruptions in our research spaces,” Comte said. “This strategy not only addresses immediate issues but also counters the buildup of deferred maintenance and unwanted energy consumption.”
