Virginia Beach Public Schools Case Study

Demand Response Program with an EZ Button

Virginia Beach City Public Schools “VBCPS” operates
86 educational sites ranging from elementary schools to high schools to adult education centers.

Energy costs for this many facilities has a significant
impact on the budget so VBCPS entered into an agreement with the electric industry leader PJM to help with load management on the electrical grid and to lower VBCPS energy costs by implementing a Demand
Response program.

When PJM notifies a Demand Response event is
coming, the school district’s master technician can
easily setup the sites that are involved by clicking a few buttons on their website and pushing the EZ Button to automatically make it happen without interfering with important curriculum or activities by exempting
specific zones.  Once the event is over, the system
automatically restores everything back to normal.

Goals

  • Reduce Energy Usage with Short Notice
  • Easily make Exceptions for High Priority Zones & Activities.
  • Predetermine the Event Duration.
  • Automatically Restore Sites to Normal

 

Solutions

  • Link each site’s  Building Control System to a central Tridium Server with Web interface
  • Create a standard Demand Response webpage for each site that’s included in the  Demand Response program, breaking the site into zones that can be exempted at the click of a mouse.
  • Automatic timers in the webpage make starting, duration and restoring accurate and simple.
  • To date there are 15 schools on the Tridium platform with 6 more being added this year.