With the majority of its facilities built in the 1970s and 1980s, Toronto’s Centennial College was primed to realize substantial energy savings by upgrading technology to current levels. An energy audit conducted by Toronto Hydro Energy Services in 2004 revealed several opportunities for improvement, with substantial savings coming from two measures – power factor correction and an energy efficient lighting retrofit. In fact, these two measures accounted for approximately 70% of the annual cost savings. Furthermore, when available incentives are taken into account, the payback on investment for these measures is a low 2.9 years.

Incentives lower overall costs
Like any public institution relying on government funding, Centennial College must manage its resources carefully. Energy management is no different. With energy prices on the rise and growing concern about the environment, there is pressure on institutions to implement energy efficiencies. “Toronto Hydro Energy Services did an excellent job of presenting the opportunities for improvement and their respective cost and greenhouse gas savings. They also sourced all the available incentives, bringing down the overall project cost and lowering the payback period to just 3.1 years,” explains Tyrone Gangoo, Manager, Plant Services, Facilites & Services, Centennial College.

Delivering as promised
All measures were implemented before classes resumed in the fall and already the retrofit of existing lighting to newer, more efficient T-8 technology and the introduction of occupancy sensors to better manage lighting use are delivering the savings as



promised. As Gangoo points out, “We have an annual energy budget of approximately $2 million and we expect to see savings of about 10% annually from all the implemented improvements – a significant difference. In addition, we’ve reduced our environmental footprint by 1,441 tonnes of CO2 annually – that’s the equivalent of taking 424 cars off the road!”