SBU Sees Energy Savings During Winter Months 

 

Sustainability Staff

3/16/21

Despite many uncertainties and rapidly evolving lifestyle changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Stony Brook University Department of Energy Management has been hard at work finding ways to reduce energy consumption across Stony Brook’s main campus. We are proud to report that during the winter months of 2020 and 2021, Stony Brook has been able to save 6,270 MMBtu in both electrical and thermal energy. 

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stony Brook’s Fall 2020 semester moved from a primarily in-person setting to a virtual learning environment with online classrooms and professional staff trading their work offices for home offices. The University’s on-campus population was also largely reduced during this timeframe. As plans for these changes were drawn up, the SBU Department of Energy Management began to consider how to further our commitment to reducing energy consumption on campus, in light of the larger environmental and societal shifts that were taking place. 

With building occupation levels lower than any previous year in recent memory, we identified an opportunity for savings through the optimization of heating systems in campus buildings, particularly during holidays weekends. During the recent Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays, optimizing the HVAC systems acoss 35 campus buildings resulted in a savings of 158,000 kWh in electrical energy and 2,938 MMBtu in thermal energy, specifically for those holiday weekends. 

Building on the successful energy consumption reduction over these holiday weekends, our Energy Management team saw another opportunity to optimize systems during the 2021 Winter Session. Schedule changes in over 40 campus buildings during the month of January resulted in a total electrical savings of 484,000 kWh and thermal energy savings of 1,142 MMBtu. 

As our campus environment continues to pivot and evolve over the coming months, the Department of Energy Management will continue to identify opportunities for the University to reduce our economic footprint and build on our campus-wide commitment to establishing practices that reduce energy consumption.