"The Graves County Board of Education decided a couple of years ago to enter a guaranteed performance contract with Harshaw Trane HVAC (heating/ventilation/air conditioning) contractors of Louisville,” said John Oldham, the school district’s maintenance director. “We recently have collected enough data to determine how much money our school district saved over the past year and it has far exceeded our expectations.”
“Our savings for electricity was $210,000," Oldham said. "The guaranteed performance contract applies that savings toward the bond, or loan, payment of $114,000. Therefore, our net gain from our contract is a profit of $96,088. That’s actual money in our pocket. It’s money we did not spend that we were spending in the past, before this energy savings project. When we add the rebates for energy savings from this past year, we have a total of $195,643. Then, when we add our bond payment back into it, we have a total we saved in the past year on energy uses in the Graves County Schools of $305,000.”
Oldham thanked and congratulated the Graves County Board of Education, for thinking
of and implementing this program.
"Two individuals also deserve a lot
of credit," Oldham said. "Shawn Crowe of Harshaw Trane in Louisville provided a lot
of very useful ideas on how to maximize our savings. Finally, Jacob
Clark, our lead maintenance technician in the Graves County Schools,
has spent numerous hours setting times and temperatures in the actual
operation of equipment in order to save us that money. We hope to
save even more money in the future to get the most bang for the buck
that we can for the students in the Graves County Schools.”
