Plug Smart is currently working with North Olmsted on Ohio’s largest House Bill 264 project in 2012. Ohio’s HB 264 is an energy conservation program that allows school districts to make energy efficiency improvements to their buildings and use the savings generated to pay for those improvements. This program allows school districts, in this one instance, to borrow funds without having to pass a ballot issue to the authority to borrow. This has given districts the ability to save millions of dollars in energy and operating costs, without any additional cost to the taxpayers. Since the inception of this program, over 500 school districts in Ohio have taken advantage of this wonderful opportunity.
Our project with North Olmsted spans nine different schools and 608,070 square feet throughout the school district. The Plug Smart engineers analyzed every square inch of the nine facilities and came up with several different Energy Conservation Measures (ECM’s). The main ECM’s consist of brand new boilers and windows in three of the buildings, upgraded lighting, water conservation measures, and a state of the art energy management system for all of the buildings. All of these ECM’s will pay for themselves over the allotted fifteen year payback set forth within HB 264.
This HB 264 project, set to be completed this summer, will reduce the district’s average utility spend by over 34%. North Olmsted will also see well over $300,000 in projected annual savings, directly from the ECM’s installed from this project.
