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  1. Only a cost-effective approach to energy conservation is prudent.

    Not everything promoted as "green" results in a real cost avoidance or has an ROI making it a worthy investment.

    One has to wonder how many "energy conservation" contractors and vendors these legislators are looking to deliver for.
  2. Perhaps some of the 6200 buildings are not needed and selling them would be better than sinking money into upgrading buildings that needed. They could use the proceeds from the sale of the unnecessary buildings to offset the energy retrofits for the important ones.
    Beautiful. Keep your eye on the money.
  4. From experience---when the state has these "experts" redesign the lighting in the public buildings they should get prices for the replacement bulbs and lighting parts--- energy efficient lighting is not worth the time and effort when bulbs cost $40-60 each, burn out in months and the entire line of bulbs & ballests need to be replaced when the first bulb goes out. Been there--seen it.
  5. Come on ,people.Do some reaearch and stop wasting tax money on silliness. Seattle has poured millions of extra dollars to build a greenie library and county administration building and both use more energy than the old ones and are much smaller.San Diego spent millions on solar for schools and it was all a rat hole.There are no savings , just extra expense, almost forever.
  6. “......but with high energy prices and 6,200 state buildings, we think that with investing $200 million we’ll make money faster this way,” Hulsey said.

    I'm not really interested in what poilticians "think" (read: guess) in situations like this. Not only that, $200 million seems to be just an arbitrary number based on the disproven notion that the more you spend on something the better it will be fixed.

    Base the funding on design-based performance guarantees. Hire a design/contractor willing to put their money where their promises are. Include it in the contract.

    If a building retrofit "promises" to save X amount of energy dollars/year, hold the contractor responsible for that level of performance. If real-world performance doesn't meet projections, the contractor pays the difference back to the state. If it exceeds them, the contractor is awarded a share of the additional savings (and makes more money on the job).

    Happens all the time in the private sector, particularly involving advanced control applications in refineries, chem plants, etc..

    But then again, the private sector tends to be infinitely more careful with its money.
  7. This is a great move. Energy efficiency keeps utility bills DOWN. Energy efficiency cuts waste and saves money for taxpayers and ratepayers. There has been a lot of work done studying the energy efficiency potential in Wisconsin.

    Wisconsin also has a lot of firms engaged in energy efficiency. Johnson Controls is a leader in the field and a big employer.

    Yes, the private sector invests in energy efficiency. So, why shouldn't the public sector? Because people like to waste energy and money? Not many!

    Wisconsin doesn't have any coal, oil or natural gas in the ground so it makes no sense for us to adopt policies in favor of burning more fossil fuels. None! That only sends our dollars out of state.

    Amazing the things we cannot agree on these days!
  8. This could be kept (somewhat) honest if each government department that drew money from this fund either received the surplus if the energy savings were greater than the costs, or had its budget permanently cut by whatever amount the "savings" failed to pay above the cost. Because, "energy savings" is not a bargain if it costs $1 million to save $1,000. per year.

    The basic problem is, businesses (usually) pay for their financial mistakes, not because they want to but because they must. As a result, a business is (usually) going to look at energy conservation with a hard-headed "show me the money" attitude.

    But, government need not worry seriously about such things, for if the energy savings fail to repay the debt plus the debt service costs, those who run the departments will just say, "we're so sorry!" and insist their budget cannot be cut as they provide an essential service.

    So, it is this lack of ultimate accountability that makes taxpayers reasonably suspicious of such grand plans. Because, politics- not the financial bottom line- is and forever will be the "bottom line" of government.
  9. I am in this business. Common sense is the biggest saver of energy.

    The equation is really simple: start with the lights. Upgrade the lighting. New lights are more efficient with wattage consumption and new fixtures get more light the proper direction.

    You need to avoid the ballast changers as they only get a fraction of the potential savings. You need to avoid the non-standards lighting. LED may be great but there aren't any standards so you need to avoid it to keep future costs in line. Same with proprietary communication. For example: Orion energy? --- not too bad. Proprietary wireless communication? Nope. Constant light control? Nope.

    Finally, go for the extra 20-35% for constant lighting control. Its worth it.

    On the HVAC side- not much gain for huge effort. Most go with first cost junk equipment like packaged rooftops which have poor life cycle costs. If you want something good in HVAC think FLUID. This means nicer and higher first cost equipment.

    The next biggest problem is integration. Most GC's are bad because they split the MEP's (mech/electrical/plumbing) so finding integrated systems and getting operational savings via integration is difficult.

    Better off pursuing integration on the Architect level and hiring a Systems Integrator or very sharp MEP engineering group to push your lighting, HVAC and other control system designs.
  10. I need to clarify on the Orion- they are a lighting company that does primarily switched proprietary communicating lighting systems. The proprietary and switched lighting loses out on extra savings. Probably a bigger savings with DALI.... and it is open protocol so future ballast replacements you can shop around. And, yes, this is probably something the local lighting agents don't want to tell you.


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