Avondale College commits to sustainability

Australia’s historic Avondale College of Higher Education has committed itself to a program of water and energy conservation designed to deliver strong sustainability benefits.

The 118-year-old institution has employed CST Energy and Water utility monitoring systems to help reduce costs and achieve greater sustainability across its 325 ha campus in Cooranbong, near Lake Macquarie. Andrew Boughton, the general manager of CST Wastewater Solutions’ Energy Division, said the college’s sustainability program “would do credit to some of the top Australian businesses with which we work”.

Avondale College at Cooranbong, near Newcastle.

Utilities monitoring systems will cover two main areas. Sub-monitoring of electricity using CT (current transducer) devices connected to data loggers provides accurate data on all electricity usage, while water meters log every litre of water at 30-second intervals, providing precise readings. This information means costs can be allocated per building and per department, which makes each one responsible for the management of their own utilities.

“We need baseline data to efficiently control our water and energy costs,” said Paul Hattingh, vice president of finance infrastructure and risk at Avondale. “Monitoring is the first step in helping departments to be able to take responsibility for their financial and environmental sustainability, whereas, with pooled costs, no one can be individually accountable.”

The monitoring will also assist users to determine when peak energy usage is occurring and find ways to reduce or reallocate this. Energy companies claim they need to have the necessary infrastructure at all times to be able to cope with peak usage; so by reducing this usage, Avondale can save large amounts of money on its energy bills.

Implementing monitoring and accountability changes was the particular challenge for Avondale, which didn’t have a BMS (building management system) in place. However, CST’s utility monitoring system was able to provide a suitable and affordable substitute for a BMS, and provide all the data necessary to recommend the changes the college needed to make in order to use its utilities more sustainably.

One of the advantages of the utilities monitoring system such as that being deployed at Avondale is affordability, said Boughton. He noted that many companies are put off by the initial investment cost of utilities monitoring, but stated the CST systems are “around a third of the cost of most others in the market”.

He added that existing systems “tend to be divided into two schools of thought - financial and engineering” - which often leads to two systems being installed. “Systems such as those introduced by Avondale combine both areas,” Boughton said, “allowing us to provide a comprehensive analysis to the user.”

Avondale’s long-term goal is to implement behavioural change and will regularly meet with CST Energy and Water in order to achieve this. The two organisations will be looking for practical measures, such as turning off lights and air conditioning when buildings are not in use and putting timers on electronic devices so that they automatically turn off after a certain period of time.

“We have a long-term vision of greater sustainability,” said Hattingh. “In the future, we hope to be running courses on sustainability and even allowing a student group to recommend and manage behavioural change, based on the utilities monitoring data we have introduced.”