By Ron Marinelli, Director of Facilities, Lopatcong Township School District

Lopatcong Township School District is a public school district located in Warren County New Jersey that serves approximately 900 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The district is made up of two schools, the elementary school at 57,240 square feet and the middle school at 99,000 square feet. Making a difference has been my own personal goal for the past three years while serving as director of facilities.

I believe that there is no excellence without passion. Throughout the past three years I could clearly see the wasted energy in our school. We had no control over our two facilities and this was resulting in high utility bills. With a plan in mind we first gained control over our facilities by introducing an upgrade to our automation system to gain control and help to reduce the building demand.

I had put both facilities on a schedule through the automation system instead of units coming on all at once, again helping to reduce our facility demand.
Seeking more ways to yet squeeze juice from the orange, I introduced our school district to North America Power Partners. We enrolled in two programs offered through North America Power Partners, self schedule and spinning reserve. The results from these programs have yielded our district outstanding results. We have currently sold back over 896 hours of electric without the interruption of any academic time. My goal by September 2009 is to have 1000 hours sold back.
As a result to this, our peak load demand has gone from 286 to 175 at our middle school and from 198 to 89 at our elementary school.

Through the 2008 school year, we reduced over 470 tons of CO2, equivalent to the removal of 80 cars off the road. Or, better said our entire staff walking to work for entire year. Setting out to make a difference soon became a standard and as time went on our district became even more energy efficient. Our electric went down 17% and gas consumption dropped 13% with a total cost of operation down by 30%.

In the continued pursuit of saving energy, we embarked on a lighting upgrade at our elementary facility changing out from T-12 to T-8 & T-5 with electronic ballasts, adding to our savings in energy we reduced 10,500 Kw. Recently doing lighting upgrades to our middle school gym from 250 Watt medial halide to 4 lamp fixtures T-8. I am very proud to say our district has been recognized by North America Power Partners as “Client of the Month” and also recognized by Building Magazine ” Who’s Who” as among the top 43 facilities in the nation. Goals need to be set. Without goals we have nothing to strive for.

We all need to strive and help save a little more energy. We are only a two school district, and if we can have this much of an impact just think of what your five and six school districts can do. This is proof positive that you do not need to be a big district to make a big difference.