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__Energy Audit for RSENR Spear St. Laboratory Building 2014__ Our group is focused on reducing the energy consumption of the RSENR 's Spear St. Laboratory. Our group is made up of three students: Claudia Lawton, Grayson Webb and William Boyles, as well as two advisors: Carl White and Gary Hawley. Our primary goal is to organize and attend an energy audit by an Efficiency Vermont representative. Preforming an energy audit will highlight areas or building systems in the Spear St. Lab building that can be upgraded or changed in order to increase energy efficiency and reduce overall usage. We will use the information from the audit to compile lists of possible changes to the building that are most necessary and/or also easiest (low-hanging fruit) to complete. We are hoping that some changes such as replacing exterior and some interior light bulbs with LED's can be done very soon.

Along with attending the audit, we will also compose a YouTube video that will showcase the auditing process and also summarize what we have learned about the past, present and possible future efficiency of the Spear St. Lab. This video will be linked to the UVM website/wiki so that future students can learn from our efforts and experiences.

We have already analyzed some energy use/cost data for the Spear St. using records dating from 2004 to 2013. Each of us examined one of the three utilities: natural gas, electricity and water, and made graphs for the usage and cost of each utility by month, comparing the data over recent years (2010 through 2013). In order to get a better understanding of where the building currently stands as far as efficiency goes, we plan to compare our findings with data from the Cook Laboratory and the Rubenstein Laboratory.

We also plan on teaming up with the Net Zero Energy group and discussing ways that we increase the use of renewal energy sources at the Spear Street Lab. One of our ideas is to use the wood chips that will be produced when the on-site test forest is removed as an energy source (heat) somewhere in the lab building. We are also interested in finding insulation solutions for the Greenhouse that is attached to the headhouse building so that it could be more available for ecological student labs at UVM.

Below is a (figure) representing Natural Gas usage for the Spear St. Lab over a four year period. This graph emphasizes the drop in usage in the summer and early fall and the peak in the winter months. We will use data like this in conjunction with the information from the audit in order to help us decipher areas most in need of change. This graph could possibly point to places in the Lab that don’t have sufficient insulation or doors that aren’t flush with the ground or walls. These would be relatively low-cost changes that we could look at fixing immediately to improve the efficiency of the Lab.

Natural Gas use for the Spear St. Lab by month from 2010-2013  (cubic feet / square foot)