Facility Systems

Operating Cost Reduction Goals

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) is the second-largest school district in Alaska, covering over 25,000 square miles — an area larger than the state of West Virginia. The District serves over 19,000 students at 46 schools. The facility staff’s primary focus is on safety, comfort, and operating cost avoidance. Due to the large geographic area covered and the number of schools and corresponding equipment the District supports it was challenging for facility staff to narrow their focus to improvements that would bring the most substantial return on their time and funds spent. When the time came for MSBSD to focus more on reducing facility operating costs, they looked to ATS Alaska for suggestions on reducing costs through energy efficiency.

ATS & Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District

ATS has been a partner to MSBSD for many years, supplying access control, security, PA system integrations, and recently the building controls retrofit of eight elementary schools. After hearing the District’s need to focus on operating cost savings, ATS suggested they add ATS’ signature energy service, facilityCARE.

facilityCARE is an ongoing commissioning and advanced analytics platform that proactively identifies energy waste and system inefficiencies as they happen. Setpoint and sequence modifications, manual system overrides, staff activity, deferred maintenance, and space-use changes can all lead to operational drift within a building automation system and ultimately increase the money spent on unneeded energy usage. The facilityCARE service ensures MSBSD staff are informed of energy-wasting operations and allows them to focus on repairs that will bring about the most significant cost savings for the District.

Result of facilityCARE Program

MSBSD chose to implement the facilityCARE service at the eight schools ATS recently retrofitted. As part of the program, an ATS energy engineer hosts a monthly facilityCARE meeting with the MSBSD facility staff to review any open issues and to point out opportunities to increase energy efficiency. As a result, each school included in the service has seen a significant decrease in each building’s energy usage intensity (EUI), a comparison of energy usage and square footage. Cumulatively, the schools have seen an overall kBtu reduction of 35 percent in year-over-year usage. Additionally, the District has seen over $262,000 in savings.