Energy audit highlights serious concerns

With the Kimball Event Center energy audit complete, the Kimball City Council heard a presentation by Bob Mead, Nebraska Municipal Power Pool, at the March 21 council meeting which highlighted several concerns.

According to Mead, who was accompanied by City of Kimball Electric Department Director Bill Hinton on a facility walk-through, some errors were fixed immediately.

“The ice machine and the cooler were being underused,” Mead said.

Another issue that was previously corrected included a heating unit and cooling unit set up in such a way that as one kicked on to condition a room, the other kicked on a moment later to counteract the first, according to City of Kimball Special Projects Coordinator, Amy Sapp. Each unit was drawing energy yet there was no impact on the temperature of the room. The thermostats have been reprogrammed, according to Sapp.

Additionally, locking boxes over the thermostats were previously left unlocked, but are now locked – leaving just one person with control over room temperatures.

“Last month when the utility bill came it was $2,200, in the past few years it was over $4,000 in the same time frame,” Sapp said. “So those changes did make a difference.”

Mead presented photos along with a description of the current conditions at the facility, including deteriorated sheet rock, exposed live wires, wiring that was not up to code, powered vents that remove conditioned air out of a room – which may have been used at one time as a fresh air vent, but are no longer necessary.

“There is enough air coming in, with other ventilation, that this is not needed,” Mead said. “Bill Hinton has done quite a bit of work looking at the systems you have in place. We did a facility walk through and came up with the wattage of lights in each room. I have been doing an energy analysis on that, although, it is hard to come up with the number of hours that the place is open and used. I could say that you could probably get about a 25 percent savings going from the lighting you have to LED lighting, but there is a capital output for the LED lighting.”

A majority of the concerns were found in the dead air space between the dropped ceiling and the roof, with insufficient insulation and many electrical concerns, such as use of extension cords, exposed live wires and grounds and uncovered duct work. Additionally, unused equipment is littered throughout the dead air space.

“There is probably about 30 to 40 panels, boxes and electrical conduit that are uncovered, and those should be covered,” he said. “The wiring has been redone several times.”

The infrastructure is sound, according to Mead, but many of these conditions need to be remedied very soon. Contractor bids would have to be obtained to bring the building up to code, he added.

“Bringing it up to code could be a challenge,” he said. “The building itself is okay, the outside skin of the building is okay, the outside insulation levels in the outside walls is R11 and seems to be in good shape. The insulation between the ceiling and roof needs to be upgraded drastically.”