Zero Net Energy Pilot for Local Educational Agencies and Community Colleges
Client: PG&E
Project Dates: January 2016 - December 2019
Project Team: Resource Refocus
project summary
Governor Brown’s “50/50/50” plan seeks to reduce energy consumption of all existing buildings, residential and non-residential, by 50% by 2030. This PG&E offering helps school districts begin to move toward retrofitting existing schools by providing design assistance, construction inspections, incremental cost buy down, and performance monitoring. The participating school districts are paired with consultant teams who make design suggestions based on utility bills, site visits, and energy modeling. After the retrofit is complete, the end-use energy consumption will be monitored for a full year to verify performance and allow extended commissioning of systems and operations.
Prop 39
California Proposition 39, the Clean Energy Jobs Act of 2012, allocated $2.5 Billion for energy retrofits in schools over 5 years. A portion of these funds was allocated to ZNE retrofits. In parallel to these efforts and in support of California’s 2030 zero net energy (ZNE) commercial and retrofit goals, several CA utilities are running a Proposition 39 ZNE K-14 School Retrofit Pilot. There are currently 12 schools participating in the pilot, each receiving support in the following areas:
Design Development
Construction and Construction Inspections
Equipment and System “Buy Down”
Ongoing Performance Monitoring
The pilot aims to help make ZNE business as usual. With a long term goal of developing a scaled-up program, this paper covers lessons learned from the first few years of the pilot split into the following areas:
Challenges and opportunities applicable to all schools, such as outreach, timelines, metrics, and budgets.
Potential utility-level solutions such as focusing on common measures through a menu of EE retrofits to match common modernization efforts, optimizing rooftop PV and daylighting, replacing Bard units, portable classroom design, staff / student education, and engaging ZNE “champions.”
Solutions that may need support beyond the IOUs, such as simplified permitting and/or expedited DSA reviews for common items, statewide streamlined bulk procurement, and enhanced marketing to reach schools.
lessons learned
Non-energy and non-monetized benefits to schools, such as daylighting, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, resiliency, and educational potential, should be highlighted alongside energy savings and benefits.
Strong advocates at the school are critical to success.
Gathering as much scheduling information as possible during the application process and carefully working with the school staff will help to understand unique conditions.
School construction timelines are severely impacted by delays, since the construction windows are typically limited to summer, winter, and spring breaks.
Approach the retrofit in the right order. First and foremost, the goal is to provide a better school. Teams should consider comfort and health first, then work towards ZNE design considerations, such as load reduction, mechanical design and equipment optimization, and PV and renewable considerations.
key solutions
Focus on common measures and create a “menu” of options
Create a streamlined procurement process to connect schools with prequalified vendors that have negotiated preferred pricing under the program
Consider focusing on highly efficient new portable classroom construction
Adequately value non-energy benefits to allow for further investment that results in better indoor air quality, thermal, acoustic and lighting environment in schools
Influence the policies, practices, and programs that schools typically use to drive construction and retrofit practices to require energy outcomes between 16-22 kBtu/square foot-year
Provide support for school districts in the development of energy targets, owners project requirements, energy master plans, and specifications that support ZNE and high performance outcomes
Educate and enable champions to support ZNE schools. Increase awareness and support for ZNE new and existing school retrofits with trainings, workshops, webinars, recognition, and outreach. Educate school administrators on the value of high performance schools and technical audiences on ways to deliver ZNE within reasonable costs