Adminstrative Office Building
The Administrative Office Building was designed by Loebl, Schlossman, Bennet, and Dart in 1969 and houses the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at UIC.
AOB's energy savings project involves updating building lighting from fluorescent to LED, and repairing and adjusting the operation conditions of the HVAC system's air handling units. Adjusting when and how these units run, though seemingly small changes, will add up to significant financial savings and a major reduction in the university's carbon footprint.
Project details Heading link
| Project Start Date: | October 8, 2019 |
| Approximate Project Duration: | February, 2020 |
| Project Manager: | Anthony Civito |
| Estimated Financial Savings: | $63,732 annually |
| Estimated Energy Savings: | 280,616 Kilowatt hours annually |
| Estimated Steam Savings: | 2,396 Mlbs |
Energy Savings Heading link
The 280,616 kilowatt hours that UIC will save annually after this project’s completion means that UIC will have prevented 219 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
These emissions would have taken the 3,894 trees on UIC’s campus over 2 years and 4 months to absorb.”
219 tons of carbon emissions is equivalent to: Heading link
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3 tanker trucks' worth of gasoline
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459 barrels of oil consumed
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24 homes' annual energy use
Energy Conservation Measures Heading link
- Turning off the air handling unit fans during periods when AOB is unoccupied, and revising their scheduled run times so the fans are only on between the hours of 5 a.m. and 7 p.m.
- Optimizing the start and stop times of the air handling units, so that the AHUs will adjust their schedules automatically based on weather conditions, building conditions, and past system performance. This also requires syncing all air handling units to the building automation system, so they can be controlled from a central source, and replacing malfunctioning components such as heating or cooling coils.
- Syncing air dampers in select air handling units with CO2 sensors, so that outside air is only pulled into the building when necessary for air quality.
- Implementing warm-up and cool-down times of the air handling units, where the AHU is on, but no air is being pulled from outside. This will minimize the overall start-up time and reduce the amount of outside air pulled into the space.
• Upgrading the interior lighting from linear fluorescent lamps to LED lamps. These LED lamps are “ballast compatible,” which means that they’ll will work with the fluorescent lighting framework (ballasts) currently in place in AOB.
• Syncing the atrium’s LED lights and the exterior lights to the building automation system. This means that the atrium lights will automatically turn off from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and the exterior lighting will turn off from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.