Page 13 - School Planning & Management, March 2019

savings are often redirected to support the central mission—namely teacher salaries, supplies, and programs.”
What are your district’s annual electric- ity costs? What could you do with a savings of 35 percent?
LIGHTING UP TOMORROW FOR EVEN LESS
In “Intelligent Buildings,” an article by Mark Hanson and Jody Andres, AIA LEED- AP, also of Hoffman Planning, Design & Construction, Inc., the authors suggest that technological advances being developed now may cut utility costs even further.
For example, many utilities are cur- rently developing smart grids capable of providing real-time price information— utility prices tend to move up and down throughout a 24-hour day. “When power costs are elevated, such as at peak demand times,” write Hanson and Andres, “non- essential equipment or some lighting can be programmed to turn themselves down or even turn off.
“Demand rises and peaks at certain times throughout every day,” Hanson says. “Prices rise and fall as demand rises and falls. Programming can tell the building controls to implement short term measures when demand and pricing peak.”
For instance, continues Hanson, a building’s automation system might be programmed to prevent the chiller from operating above 70 percent of its capac- ity. During peak demand periods, as the chiller approaches 70 percent of its capac- ity, a programmed HVAC system will reset temperatures so as to limit air condition- ing or heating, lighting in certain areas of the building, and limit fan pressures in certain systems.
While the focus here has been on intel- ligent control a building’s HVAC system, there are other kinds of intelligent building controls. For example, CO2 sensors can be set to manage ventilation. When connected to an intelligent building’s controls, CO2 sensors can cause the automation system to adjust a building’s vents, increasing and
decreasing the flow of outside air into the building as needed.
“We are heading for a world where prices are no longer fixed, but change in real time as demand changes,” Hanson says.
Intelligent building systems will liter- ally discuss costs with the electric grid and
perhaps other sources of building costs, and as prices rise and fall, the buildings will adjust their power consumption.
Intelligent buildings may not be smart- er than your students. Still, buildings with such capabilities are very, very smart. SPM
“I didn’t realize how much they couldn’t hear.”
– Laura Ostrom, 6th Grade Teacher, Irvine, CA
Classrooms make teachers’ and students’ jobs harder. In fact, students with completely normal hearing miss up to 40% of what the teacher says just because of seating arrangements and background noise.
Clarifying teachers’ voices with a Frontrow microphone helps avoid that waste — improving comprehension, attention,
and outcomes.
With proven results and hundreds of thousands
of classrooms using Frontrow, isn’t it time yours did too?
Watch the video on how Woodbury Elementary (Irvine) uses FrontRow.
gofrontrow.com/spm-classroom www.gofrontrow.com
MARCH 2019 / SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT 13