Motivated by a desire to spend as much of its annual budget as possible on education, the University of North Texas took advantage of legislative changes to fund the renovation of its aging building infrastructure.
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The Challenge
By 1995, UNT‘s building systems had become unreliable and required constant maintenance and repair. But financing a comprehensive facility upgrade would require more than UNT‘s annual budget allocation. Legislative changes, however, opened the door to new financing options, empowering universities to retain energy savings and to self-fund energy conservation projects.
In 1996, UNT issued a request for qualifications to select an energy service company (ESCO) deemed capable of providing the required renovations and strategic energy upgrades. The university defined the modernization objectives and specified that it wanted to fund the endeavor with a performance contract, guaranteeing energy savings sufficient to finance improvements.
TAC was uniquely positioned to accept the challenge because it had prior experience successfully implementing controls and renovations at UNT, as well as having an entire division dedicated solely to performance contracting.
Moreover, TAC demonstrated how the university could finance the project and pay for it with energy savings of up to $22.5 million over fifteen years.
Upon contract award, TAC committed to fifteen separate retrofit projects designed, first and foremost, to upgrade the aging infrastructure. In addition, each project was designed to reduce utility costs while improving the learning environment.
The Solution
TAC‘s performance contracting group assembled a ten-member team of experts in energy management, lighting, HVAC and automatic temperature control to perform the initial energy audit. Over a period of six months, the team invested more than 5,000 man-hours analyzing energy demand and conservation opportunities to calculate potential savings.
Calculations showed that the savings from the selected measures would exceed $1.4 million per year, with simple payback of the initial investment in a little more than six years.
Accordingly, TAC offered a ten-year performance contract guaranteeing the university energy savings of $1.2 million per year, enabling UNT to repay the project costs. And if the energy savings dropped below the guaranteed level during the ten-year period, then TAC would write a check for the difference.
The Bottom Line
Installation of new equipment began in July 1997 and was completed in March 1999. To date, the renovated systems deliver a consistently higher level of comfort for the 30,000 students that attend the university.
In addition to being more accurate and responsive, the new systems result in fewer calls to maintenance personnel. Centrally monitored and streamlined digital controls also allow facilities staff to quickly troubleshoot and resolve problems throughout various facilities.
TAC‘s comprehensive training program enables UNT facility managers to develop competencies in HVAC management, control concepts, energy management strategies, system operation, and troubleshooting. And TAC‘s Performance Assurance Support Services (PASS) department is available to assist UNT operators if they encounter any problems during the guarantee period.
As an added benefit outside the scope of the original contract, UNT and TAC have established an on-site training center for the university‘s facilities staff. The training center boasts a fully equipped product wall containing all the most common components used by the TAC system on campus.
