Facility Overview
The Nevada Army National Guard maintains more than a dozen facilities across Northern Nevada, These buildings facilitate a wide range of duties, from fire stations and classrooms to training centers and vehicle maintenance facilities. Headquartered in Carson City, the National Guard is a leader in smart energy management, implementing cutting-edge energy-saving technologies and using renewable resources abundant in Northern Nevada.
Challenges
Facilities located throughout the state of Nevada must communicate, and be managed remotely through a single, user-friendly interface. In one of the facilities they use solar panels to power their headquarters' buildings. Before ATC's work, surplus energy was sold to the local power company for credit, but could be better used to power equipment on-site. In other buildings, lighting control systems and HVAC control systems worked independently, missing valuable opportunity to benefit each other to increase energy savings.
Solutions
ATC installed maintains wide-area-network (WAN) servers to communicate between sites that are separated by > 300 miles, significantly decreasing the costs to maintain these remote facilities. We integrated climate- and lighting-control systems to save energy by not heating, cooling, nor lighting unoccupied spaces. We provided this client with real-time energy monitoring of photovoltaic arrays, as well as electricity purchased. Within minutes of detect a surplus of energy created by solar cells, we switch HVAC equipment from gas heating to electric heating, thereby using free energy instead of gas. We also monitor gas and water consumption in real-time, helping the client identify other means of saving energy.
Results
ATC works closely with Nevada National Guard engineers, management, and maintenance staff to develop innovative energy-saving strategies. By integrating lighting and HVAC controls, we have helped this client realize significant energy savings, and we have developed innovative ways to use excess energy and decrease energy demand and consumption, thereby saving tax-payers money.
Nevada Army National Guard
