Moody goes retro with energy conservation

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Nicholas Benroth
  • 23rd Wing Public Affairs
MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. --  As a building gets older it becomes less energy efficient. When this happens it ends up using more energy that what it needs.

That's where the retro-commissioning team comes into play.

"Our team comes in and identifies any problems that are affecting a building," said Jason Wright retro-commissioning technician. "We try and restore the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems to their original state or better."

The teams surveyed, analyzed, designed, implemented and evaluated four facilities last year that were wasting too much energy.

"When a building goes through retro-commissioning it is essentially restored," said Althea Spriggs, 23rd Civil Engineering Squadron resource efficiency manager. "Retro-commissioning is a rigorous and systematic process of checking a building to ensure their continued performance over time.

"Moody has facilities where HVAC may not be operating at optimal conditions, which make some parts of the building more comfortable than other parts," added Mrs. Spriggs. "These conditions were validated by recent civil engineer maintenance, inspection, repair team (CEMIRT) visits."

The validation was part one of the two-phase project to survey and fix the problems.

"During phase one, we walk through and look at each system to see what equipment we will need for that system," said Mr. Wright. "Then we interview the members that work in the buildings to identify what problems are actually happening."

The team then goes back to their company and identifies what the specifications are for the units and what their HVAC system should be running at.

The group then came back for phase two where they began to work on the units and repair them until they were running at either their standers when they were new or what is currently needed for the building.

The team spent roughly one to two weeks on each building testing the systems, cleaning and repairing any parts that were degrading performance.

"Something Mrs. Spriggs said is that "once you quite wasting energy you can finally start saving energy" and that is exactly what we are trying to do," said Mr. Wright.

According to www.energystar.gov, retro-commissioning projects typically yield five to 20 percent reductions in energy consumption depending on the condition of the facility.

"The teams finding resulted in a reduction to the energy used by these building," Mrs. Spriggs added. "This will greatly help Moody's goal to reduce a certain percentage of energy used on base."

Moody's energy goal for the year 2011 is to reach a 18% decrease of energy usage.