cities of energy programs energy efficiency and conservation efforts so don tell us about what's important going on in the city of maplewood got to start in two thousand and nine as you recall the city council did adopt an energy efficiency and conservation strategy and that strategy was really put in place to ensure that the city is meeting energy goals and objectives and the maple green team was charged with implementing those goals and objectives and the maple green team we've been in existence since two thousand and six it's a group of employees that come together to try and make city operations more energy efficient and so forth we've worked on like a recycling program and and now we're expanding on that and we're partnering with xcel energy and metro clean energy research team who will be giving us a presentation here at our two thousand and eleven kickoff meeting energy together to increase the awareness and the implementation of energy efficiency through this core needed after it in the energy efficiency streams are able to assist in generating greater participation in energy efficiency for inviting us we have been working with the city made what for some time we're here to partner with organizations and it's been an incredible partnership with xcel energy they have all the true tools and resources and programs so you know we take our skills working with communities at the very you know grassroots level to make sure that they know about these incredible programs a number of the programs that if i don't mention you know i can't speak and i'm in a personal level we have a hundred percent of our wind power our power from wind source  to save us which is a credible programs a lot of really great programs so it's been a really great part ship to help share the information on at the community level about what programs are out there so i know there's a chance at it with the metro clean minnesota governments and nonprofits and trying to draw on the resources from all of those entities to help provide resources to communities at the local level want to plan and implement their own local energy projects so whether it's energy efficiency either in people's homes on it in a community level or their community center or whatever that may be to coming together on renewable energy projects all over the state we're divided into seven regions i directed the metro region which is the eleven county metro area so do you envision a conservation in order to understand we are to save energy in your house it's really important to see where you use energy in your house because where you use the most energy you're the biggest opportunity to say as you can see energy started to know that energy star ratings are poor but you should set your program up there i sat for the winter you know it's seventy during the day and sixty two and then i think seventy the little bit warmer and our house we have a little bit lower  we try to do sixty eight or sixty nine but the key isn't really so much what the top is although the lower it is the better the key is that when you do a step back eight eight eight is great if you can remember that eighty eight degrees for eight ok from now on hundred sixty eight you can say six percent on your energy bill just from that one room and you know energy bills are only going up and you know gas prices and such are we have no control over that so make sure that you know  you're doing what you can to say your city your family some energy so you spend all this money in cooling your house probably don't want to skating and so there's lots of little areas all around that money goes out the door of the enjoys the windows the attic etc insulation is really important but you've got to do air sealing and seal up those leaks in your house and they're all over before you do that and that's what we're getting to audit talk about some of that and get some really good diagnostics and pinpoint some of those areas make sure you get that era ceiling done and then get the insulation sloshing so late in electronics or in the second tier they did to cameron slow in the way it was really weird and just like any technology it takes time it takes time there are so many different colors and so many varieties and shapes you're there if you're going to it's me really hard pressed to find as we said we need to recycle man again not in the recycling bin at one of the stores i should add icon in your boat was also had a little recycling center at their store so really getting much easier sure you recycle them they should not cannot go in the screaming to each other toby and and it's happening and they had a successful campaign and his brothers have turned out plays but the story has actually been incredible because we've put it in a never heard workshops and we i get emails sometimes of people saying we're using it it's working in our house and it's not about this specific tool of finding again what works for a house if it's a little posted a reminder on something to turn it off or you know whatever it is that helps you in your house and your family remember the thing i want to say is that kids are learning a off that are all right things that you think are off which are really off you know this computer doesn't have a computer has this little blue that's on you know when it's when it's off because it's still trying electricity so  has become a growing problem in our country and you know this power strip is a great way to deal with phantom load you know it's kind of a pain to go around unplug everything in your house so plugging it into a power struggle it really helps you fight that that band loud and reduce the energy use when you're when you mean for the thing to be awful it's not really our power management so this is kind of continuing in the same vein can you know computers desktops especially really really important to have those get those to turn off big t v s plasma screen t v s are probably the worst and they're taking up a lot of energy our t v s are getting bigger really really important not saying don't have one but unplug it when it's not in use it's really it's you know you're  if you do that but they have a certain lifetime and the that refrigerators have now are four times more energy efficient than the ones of the seventy's four times more cost over fifteen or twenty years so new washer dryers are is a correspondent went on to put two weeks before christmas last year always the timing is great and we got a new front loader and it nothing to do will keep two hundred fifty dollars in your pocket every year thank you very much  i mean i mean that's a lot of us have up to what forty bulbs in our home so five dollars a year pro ball that is big and also i want to jim to go into some of the policies the city of maplewood looking at the policy that you just presented this morning to our management team i think the viewers will get a really interested in seeing that you know not only we talk the talk but we walk the talk and i think what you propose this morning will go a long ways in public relations and also leading by example as to how to save energy and to have a lesser impact on the environment one of the strategies actually  two that we're looking at as far as our energy efficiency and conservation strategy to implement is a no idling policy i mean that's commonsense stuff i mean it's so easy it doesn't cost anything to just turn off your vehicle so we're promoting citywide use of city vehicles or even on your personal time we should really be doing this any time you're sitting longer in traffic if you're at a drive through or if you had an inspection or something you don't want to keep your vehicle running just common sense turn it off they do estimate the the use of vehicles when they're idling the u s environmental protection agency i have some stats here they estimate that on average a car emits twenty times more air pollution when idling idling than it does when being driven at thirty two miles per hour so you're just driving down the road you're not polluting as much as when you're just sitting there stuck in traffic and then i ling a medium size car for five minutes each day will produce about thirty pounds of harmful pollutants years so that's huge and we want to try and reduce those impacts citywide now though the idling policy will not apply to our squad cars and our the apparatus is going the battery is drained very quickly yeah that's important course and the second policy we're proposing is this environmental purchasing policy again free you know just take a look at the purchases the city makes and make smart decisions by one hundred percent recycled paper rather than ten percent recycled paper you know keeping in mind the budget impacts but these are the types of things that a city really should do to lead by example and show others how easy it is to make these energy efficiency improvements and upgrades but so sean thank you for the brief overview and we really appreciate your efforts  helping to reduce the city's the energy and we all now turn to our next guest larry far chief building engineer gary are in the bowels of city hall with the life of our chief building engineer there's just a couple of devices that he's going to show us here but the savings is very significant we had some stimulus program money that we were awarded of one hundred sixty three thousand dollars the project we look at on here was only and they breathe all c o two in the past we had to keep twenty percent outside air in america for seated side high humidity or cold that this device no laws that keep or damper shut and basically recycle a day or air within the building until it comes to  point and at that point there are fresh air is mixed with the internal air and then discharged of the scalars discharge outside this is an energy savings both in the heating season and also the so it does verify that there is a lot of hot air in city hall controls electronic signals that are transmitted from the summit and also energy management system it allows us to control the dampers more precisely and by putting different voltage than it opens or close the damper accordingly according with the system demand is on the set or seventy one hundred dollars project probably has a payback of less than two years on it by the energy savings by those dampers opening closing more efficiently with electronics on a versus pneumatic or air driven devices at seven thousand dollars courtesy  of the federal stimulus money now let's move on to some of the big bucks where we go to the boiler of course the boiler would have to be in the police department right yes that's correct ok let's make our way there  we go ninety six ninety seven ninety eight ninety nine percent efficiency so it's a very high efficiency boiler the secondary boiler we have is our leg boiler and that boiler is rated at eighty six to eighty nine percent either one of these boilers can run the system in the building the  one point one million b t u s so the whole facility can be ran if one should fail the how much in layman's terms how much is this saving it larry now compared to the boiler we had previously in year is running at eighty three percent we have not quite had one year of running time so i haven't done calculations on it but was saving on the average sixty percent less than we were spent last time plus the vision sees what would that be and rock dollar probably forty five thousand dollars minimum per year right now thousand dollars with all the modifications on it the stimulus project paid seventy thousand of that amount and the city of maplewood paid one thousand as our part towards it so roughly speaking this should have a payback of less than ten years  plan to going to call the thirteen and fourteen were able to move forward also reap the benefit of the stimulus program so what you're saying is they had to be replaced anyway and so we're able to take advantage of the stimulus program to move it  through we keep the system at a set temperature of sixty three degrees so we only have to heat the water up to the seventy seventy one degree on the system so they run very fission with the frequency drives once again redundancy we got two pumps identical if one should fail