Lexington, KY - In fall of 2010, the first "net-zero" public school building in the United States will open in Kentucky. The Richardsville Elementary School project in Warren County is the fruit of nearly 20 years of work under the Kentucky Department of Education to improve energy efficiency in public schools. It will advance energy efficiency benchmarks by showing what is possible for Kentucky public buildings, said Mark Ryles, director of facilities management, which reviews and approves all Kentucky school maintenance and construction programs.
The designation of net-zero for this building means that it will be so energy efficient that, over the course of a year, its solar energy panels (over 40,000 square feet mounted on rooftop and support structures) will offset the electricity it takes from the grid. The building will have a reduced energy consumption - 75 percent less when compared to the national average energy consumption of school buildings.
The Richardsville Elementary School, designed by Sherman-Carter-Barnhart Architects (Lexington and Louisville) and engineered by CMTA (Lexington and Louisville), drew national attention when it received the Special Citation award from American School and University magazine in its 2008 Architectural Portfolio. "We applaud the leadership and commitment to pursue a net-zero-energy school facility," stated the award jury.
"This one is a pioneering effort that we are all looking to," said Alex James, director of school facilities in South Carolina. James said that he and other public school management professionals learned of Kentucky's energy efficiency initiative while attending a conference held by the Council of Educational Facility Planners International. "I think it's a model that Mark and the state of Kentucky can be proud of," said James. "We'll all learn from it."
Ryles has set energy efficiency as a priority for Kentucky schools. In 1990, Paint Lick Elementary was the first Kentucky public school to have a geothermal system for heating and cooling. There are now 257 Kentucky schools with geothermal installations. There are 17 Energy Star school buildings in Kentucky as a result of partnering between the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. The federal Energy Star program recognizes schools that have achieved energy consumption at least 30 percent below what the International Building Code requires.
Some Kentucky school building projects began to surpass the bar set by Energy Star, and the idea of constructing a net-zero school became realistic. "It takes a vision and a whole lot of people working together," said Ryles. Warren County Schools committed to the project. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides energy to the local utility, Warren Rural Electric Cooperative, has given its support to the project.
"Normally we would have a schematic - floor plans already in place before we would involve engineers," said Kenny Stanfield, architect of the project. In this case, he worked closely with engineer Ken Seibert and Warren County Schools to make sure that the architectural design would meet the needs of the school while optimally accommodating energy efficiency strategies.
"Any building can be net-zero," said Seibert, who brought engineering solutions to the challenge. "You just have to put on a whole lot of solar photovoltaics that generate electricity." He points out that this approach becomes cost-prohibitive if the building consumes a lot of energy, because of the high cost of solar panels. "The one thing we always remained focused on was to reduce energy usage. When we finally have that energy usage down to our goal, okay, now how are we going to produce that energy?"
There are a couple of big decisions that can be made at the outset that have a big impact on energy efficiency: the heating, ventilating, air-conditioning system (HVAC) and the building "envelope" (exterior walls and roofing with insulation). After that, it's a matter of smaller incremental decisions that add into the energy savings.
The exterior walls will have at their core insulated concrete form (ICF), which is made from two-inch-thick sheaths of Styrofoam sandwiching poured concrete. The building will employ a highly efficient geothermal HVAC system. There is a CO2 monitoring system that will regulate the ventilation to keep good air quality indoors while not bringing in more air than necessary from outdoors - air that has to be heated or cooled depending on the season. The building is oriented north/south allowing for effective "daylighting," designed to light the building without glare so that all artificial lighting can be off during 70 percent of school hours, and artificial lighting will adjust to only supplement to the degree needed.
It will be the first Kentucky public school to have a wireless computer network. Five carts, each loaded with 30 laptops, will provide computer connectivity for the students. This has saved the school the cost of constructing a computer lab and wiring. Laptops use a fraction of the energy used to run a typical desktop computer.
Kitchen staff trained in energy-efficient food preparation at the Duke Energy kitchen lab in Charlotte, N.C. This is not a small part of the picture, in that kitchens can typically account for 25 percent of a school's energy drain.
Seibert said that TVA and Duke Energy, both of which have worked closely with Kentucky school construction projects, see all of this as working toward a good alternative to building more costly power plants. Seibert said that TVA will pay the school for every kilowatt hour of energy generated by the solar panels.
"All of these cutting-edge decisions that we are making are going to become commonplace," said Stanfield. "Building technology is advancing rapidly. Across the whole construction industry, I think that a firm that doesn't practice this way is going to be left behind very quickly."