An initiative to reduce power consumption at Toll Gate Grammar School has qualified for additional grants, lowering the cost to taxpayers to just 29% of the $77,000 bill.

The good news from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities’ SmartStart Buildings Program bodes well for other Earth-friendly district projects in the works, including a plan to replace energy-inefficient fluorescent lighting in school gymnasiums and other large, heavily-used spaces.

SmartStart, which provides incentives for building upgrades and retrofits to lower long-term energy usage, has promised $24,000 to the district for its heat recovery project at Toll Gate. The plan to install energy-efficient units in six classrooms in the 1927 school had already won more than $30,000 through another grant program. Together, the two awards lower the district cost to $22,330, or 29% of the tab. The cost is ultimately recouped in lower energy bills.
 
A leading-edge technology, heat recovery is essentially recycling, capturing the energy in exhausted air and reconditioning to either cool or heat a room, depending on its needs. Heat recovery units lower a room’s heating and cooling load by as much as 40%.

It was Hopewell Valley’s heat recovery pilot project which drew the BPU’s attention last year, earning the district the state’s 2008 Clean Energy Educator of the Year Award. As part of the pilot project, the district installed more than a dozen units in high-need areas, mostly classrooms, at all district schools except Stony Brook Elementary. With the exception of the new wing at Timberlane Middle School, which opened in 2008, Stony Brook, finished in 2002, has far more efficient systems than other district schools. All are at least 40 years old; Toll Gate and Hopewell Elementary date to the 1920s.

With SmartStart smiling favorably on heat recovery, district facilities director Norman Torkelson, who sought the grant, has his eye on grants for another district initiative: the replacement of energy-inefficient lighting in school gymnasiums. Torkelson has tagged the gyms at Hopewell and Bear Tavern Elementary schools, Timberlane Middle School and Central High School, as well as the CHS auto shop, wood shop and weight room, for replacement fixtures. New fluorescent models provide twice the light at one-fourth the power.

Green-lighted by the Board of Education, the $137,000 project has already qualified for $55,000 in state grants. If approved, the project could win another $19,250 in SmartStart funding.

“This is what I call real low-hanging fruit – twice the light at a quarter of the power,” says Torkelson.

Sample new lights have been installed in gyms at Hopewell Elementary and Timberlane, where users can see the dramatic difference in brightness. Other spaces slated to get the replacement lights are the cafeterias at Hopewell and Bear Tavern and the gym used by the Hopewell Valley YMCA in the old Central High School building on South Main Street in Pennington.