Energy conservation efforts, and cheaper fuel prices, saved $7.5 million at the Urbana campus for Fiscal Year 2009, about $2.5 million more than had been projected shortly before the fiscal year ended on June 30, according to information released recently by Facilities and Services Division.
In June, F&S reported that data for the first 10 months of FY09 indicated consumption had declined 9.6 percent from FY08.
However, after end-of-the-year accounting adjustments for coal deliveries and management FY09 ended 6.5 percent below FY08, said Terry Ruprecht, director of energy conservation at F&S.
"We're pleased with 6.5 percent savings, but after the month of May, I thought we were doing better than that," Ruprecht said. "The end-of-year adjustments took a portion of our expected reduction."
However, the campus did reach a landmark: It was only the second time during the past two decades that campus electricity consumption dropped from one year to the next, Ruprecht said.
The goal for FY10, which began July 1, is to reduce consumption by 5 percent below FY09 usage.
If achieved, that would surpass Chancellor Richard Herman's campuswide goal of reducing consumption by a total of 10 percent by the end of FY10.
Last week, colleges and other units on campus received their first energy statements indicating usage for the month of July.
Energy Billing System, a Web-enabled software that has been used by the University of Michigan for about five years, is being used by F&S to track and bill units individually for their consumption. It replaces the shadow billing system that the UI had in place for about a year and a half and used to issue statements - but not bills - for the 80 largest energy-consuming buildings.
With the implementation of EBS, usage is calculated at the departmental level, and all campus buildings, rather than just the 80 largest, are being billed for their usage.
As with the shadow billing system, utility usage is allocated to departments based upon their percentage of assigned space within a building, but takes into account high-energy-use equipment and facilities such as data centers, fume hoods and animal rooms.
Energy statements are available online with access to historical data by building and by utility - for example, electricity, steam, chilled water, including utilities services supplied by outside companies such as Ameren.
Utility contacts and people designated as energy liaisons within units were invited to attend training sessions at F&S Aug. 24-26 to learn about the system.
"EBS has all manner of reporting capabilities and diagnostics that were non-existent in the old system," Ruprecht said. "Before, we could generate a statement and that was pretty much it. We wanted to show them how they can create reports, do year-to-year comparisons and see historical data in bar-graph formats."
Energy reduction incentive details for FY10 are not fully determined yet, but perhaps beginning in FY11, colleges may be allocated their own funds to budget and pay for the energy consumption directly. Auxiliary systems such as Assembly Hall, the Illini Union and Housing Division already pay their own energy costs.