Thursday, December 04, 2008

40,000 Senegalis or My Building

The building I work in has a yearly energy bill of over $1,000,000 dollars a year. That translates to about 10 Million Kilowatt-Hours per year, the same as about 100 average American houses or 40,000 Senegalis. Granted, it is a big building, with a greenhouse on the roof, four elevators, large water dionization systems, lots of -80C freezers, class rooms, laboratories and offices. Still, that seems like a lot of electricity for one building. The building manager emailed everyone to ask if we had ideas for cutting that down some. I suggested getting a smaller autoclave. The building has three autoclaves, each big enough to park a Mini in. Hundreds of different people use these, each setting them to their own specifications, usually to autoclave one or two bottles or one tray of equipment. A machine with 1/100 of the internal volume would work for most of these jobs, and get it done faster. I emailed to suggest installing a smaller autoclave, and the building manager wrote back that, "buying and installing one would cost over $50,000, which is about $50,000 more than is available at the moment." I am sure he is right, still I can't help thinking that if we saved even 0.1% of the building's energy usage, the thing would pay for itself in five years. Different budget line though.

6 comments:

jte said...

Is it conceivable that there could be a schedule whereby the autoclave is used only a few set times each day, so that different people's stuff can get claved together and the machine wouldn't be run separately for so many small jobs?

Hmmm, it is tricky to reduce electricity use when you have a zero budget for efficiency boosting technologies. Are there motion-sensors for lighting? If not, I guess you can't afford to install them.

You could mandate that all computer monitors be set to auto-shutoff after 5 or 10 minutes of inactivity. That doesn't require any new equipment.

jte said...

How about those elevators? How tall is the building? I'd post signs on the elevators saying something like, "If at all possible, please use the stairs." And maybe put baskets of lollipops in the stairwells as thank you treats for the good citizens.

Dan Levitis said...

I have been thinking about the idea of an autoclaving schedule where people cook their stuff together, but there are two main obstacles. First, there are different programs that cook things at different temperatures, for different amounts of times and with our without water being sprayed around. Very few people who have established protocols that work are going to be willing to modify those to allow combined loads.

The second problem is that the department is currently understaffed and it does not seem that likely they have someone to organize and coordinate the joint loads, and getting stuff back to people. I am sure it could be worked out to be not very labor intensive, but I don't think it will.

gml said...

The $50,000, figure for an autoclave sounds like the cost of a good-sized, brand-new gadget. For a modest sized, used autoclave, one can probably pay much less. The link below merely happens to be the first one I found from Googling used autoclaves. For $3-6 thousand (plus some shipping and installation), and probably less, one can get a used/refurbished autoclave, big enough for a small rack of test-tubes, for instance. If a bunch of UCB workers in your building urged such a purchase, perhaps some funds could be found; perhaps there might even be an alumnus/alumna willing and able to help, if the need were publicized. The hard economic times pressing down on California (and our nation and world) make this less likely, but it may be worth looking into. GML

http://www.plazamedical.net/Autoclaves.html

Dan Levitis said...

I'm sure you are right that buying an autoclave could be much less than $50K. The problem is it has to be installed the university way, which means filing a plan, getting 17 kinds of approvals, scheduling a crew to come out, checking the electrical and water suitability of proposed hook-ups, and then having the university send someone else to actually install the thing. I think even if the autoclave was free, the process would end up costing the department tens of thousands of dollars.

jte said...

I expected as much regarding a shared autoclave schedule, though I didn't know there were so many variables to autoclaving. If you wanted to give it a try, aren't there bunches of schedule-meshing programs and websites out there that might help in lining people up?