The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech

The system’s $112 million budget for electricity, natural gas and coal benefitted from the installation of improved lighting fixtures and more efficient heating-and-air-conditioning units in various buildings across the system. Much of it was paid for with $27 million in federal stimulus funds. But the system is now regularly using its annual maintenance appropriation from the General Assembly for similar upgrades, according to Sandra Neuse, assistant vice chancellor for operations.

“We did a lot of lighting updates. That doesn’t sound very exciting,” she quipped. “... It always surprises people because it doesn’t sound like much just changing lamps.”

Other upgrades include electronic thermostats and occupancy sensors on lights that turn them off when rooms are empty.

Georgia Southern University tried to get students involved with the savings. Volunteers roamed the dorms, swapping conventional light bulbs in personal study lamps with more efficient florescent bulbs.

The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech even staged contests to award pizza parties to the dorms with the lowest energy use.

Such contests are one benefit of another upgrade, the installation of meters on individual buildings. Although the power companies centralize their meters at each school, Home energy monitor the sub meters allow administrators to monitor buildings separately, Neuse said.

“It’s very difficult to know where to put your focus if you don’t know where the energy is being used,” she said.

That paid off at Armstrong Atlantic State University where officials zeroed in on the science buildings. The culprits were the chemical hoods,Power monitor  fancy versions of what every home’s kitchen has over the stove to suck out grease and fumes.

Laboratories have hoods to draw away volatile vapors during experiments. The school won national recognition for installing variable-speed fans and tying all of the exhaust vents to a centralized stack.

It resulted in fans that only run on high when needed, making for quieter classrooms and pulling out less warm air so the heating system doesn’t have to work as hard. Lessons learned at Armstrong are being applied to the designs of future laboratories, Neuse said.

The University System’s energy conservation drew applause from the Sierra Club of Georgia’s Seth Gunning.

On a cold Tuesday morning, June and Ron Josey opened up their Dartmouth home to host the official opening of HRM’s Solar City program.

Their house is the first to participate from the program, which installs solar-powered water heating systems.

HRM has partnered with a local supplier of solar systems, Thermo Dynamics, to provide solar energy to as many as 1,000 homeowners within the next 18 months. Should the project prove successful,Home energy management  the doors will be open for additional homeowners to register.

June Josey said the installation happened in March and took one day.

“They were very efficient and very fast and it went well,” she said.

She said the solar panels were installed on the roof and pipes were sent through the attic to the basement where a new tank was installed.

Similar to a hybrid car, the original oil-fuelled hot water tank is still in place and kicks in on days when there isn’t enough solar energy or when the solar panels are covered in snow.

The homeowners can monitor on their computer how the system is doing in terms of energy and temperature.

“I call Ron a solar stocker because he quite often checks to see how much energy it’s saving,” said June.