Project Clearinghouse

Graduate Student Commons Kitchen Retrofit

Sustainability Problem and Proposed Solution: 

The Graduate Student Common (GSC) is looking at ways of going green and becoming more energy efficient in order to align with the University’s 2020 zero waste campaign and the University of California, Office of the President (UCOP) new energy and climate initiatives for the University of California system to become Carbon Neutral by 2025.

Jump to: Contact | Project Description | Funding Sources | Metrics for Success | Results
Project Categories: 
Buildings & Facilities
Energy & Climate
Project Status: 
Completed
Project End Date: 
03/15/2016
Campus Organization: 
Carbon Fund
Affiliated Department, Unit or College: 
Graduate Student Commons, Division of Graduate Studies
Project Location: 
On campus

Graduate Student Commons, Quarry Plaza


Stakeholder Contacts: 
Contact NameEmail AddressContact NumberDepartment
Rachel Neuman
rneuman@ucsc.edu
831-459-1395
Graduate Student Commons
Funding Sources: 
Carbon Fund
Graduate Student Commons Plant Reserve

Project Description: 

The objective is to make the Graduate Student Commons Restaurant/Kitchen more energy efficient for future tenants by replacing all non built-in standard efficiency cooking and refrigeration equipment with energy efficient options, replacing some built in under counter refrigeration, replacing some refrigerated display cases, replacing the lighting with LED lighting as much as possible and retrofitting the fan motors of the walk-in cooler.

1. Conduct Commercial Kitchen Audit & Receive Recommendation (complete).
2. Coordinate energy efficient commercial kitchen equipment order and LED lighting purchase. Scheduling installation to begin approximately March 2, 2016.

Metrics for Success: 

One year after completion of the project, we will be able to do a comparison from past tenant (Joe's Pizza and Subs) PG&E energy usage and compare with new tenant's electricity consumption. Our hope is that we will see a reduction in electricity.

We have calculated an 11.94 year payback period using the GHG emission calculator. There are several reasons for this:

GHG reductions are directly calculated from annual energy and water savings of the cooking and refrigeration appliances and the lighting. The lighting savings are based on direct wattage reductions per fixture for upgrading to LEDs. Additional savings are achieved through reducing the operating hours of the lighting and reducing the power draw through occupancy based dimming.

The building occupants were surveyed to determine the typical operating schedules of the appliances and lighting. The Food Service Technology Center (FSTC) has made publically available calculators for most all major appliance categories of cooking, refrigeration and sanitation appliances. The calculators are a simplified version of the procedure outlined in the Appendices of the ASTM Standard Test Method concerning each appliance type. The inputs that we determine from surveying operators are inputted into the calculators to determine annual appliance energy consumption: operating hours per day, operating days per year, number of preheats per day, pounds of food cooked per day.

The measurable reductions in energy consumption of the refrigeration, lighting, and cooking appliances will result in reduced operating costs for the new tenant. The reductions may be observed in monthly energy and water utility bills that are provided by the Energy Department of the Physical Plant for recharge purposes (when corrected for annual degree heating/cooling days, extended operating hours, and increased food production on the equipment).

Energy and water use reductions can also be estimated by running energy modeling calculations with the specifications of the existing and proposed appliances. To temper these projected savings with actual savings, some of the major appliances, such as the reach-in refrigerator, reach-in freezer, gas fryer and charbroiler, will be monitored using data logging meters. Meters were installed January 2015 and observed throughout the month of February 2015. Data for the new efficient equipment could not be attained until post installation, but because these newer models are more rigorously tested and more current and available data exists on their performance parameters, we are more confident in using existing data for the new appliances than older existing units where performance test data may be limited. For this reason, we may revise our baseline equipment energy use assumptions (for reach-in refrigeration, fryers and char broilers) to reflect data we have recorded independently through monitoring.

Result Categories: 
Infrastructure/Built Environment
Results: 

The campus will know the project is completed when the tenant opens for business.

We will use occupant surveys and site verified observations (time of use of appliances) from the previous tenant, and then update those assumptions with the tentative operating schedule of the new tenant to project the daily and annual usage patterns of the lighting, refrigeration, sanitation and cooking equipment.

This project spans the course of two tenants’ lease agreements, both with similar operating schedules, but slightly different sales volume (assumed), and equipment footprints. Therefore, we did not monitor the previous tenant’s equipment and compare it to the new tenant’s equipment. It would be misleading to compare monitoring data from the previous tenant because it is anticipated that the new tenant may choose to operate extended hours, and do significantly more in sales volume than the previous tenant (during the end of the lease).

The heavier use on the equipment would make it look like the energy savings would be much more marginal than previously estimated. Additionally, equipment like the dish machine are entirely new and we have no real way to compare energy/water consumption against the old tenant’s use of the 3-compartment utility sink. The previous tenant used almost all disposable dish-ware, while the new tenant is actually washing dish-ware to reduce impact to the landfill. Therefore, comparing energy/water use across tenants is an unfair comparison in this way.

We will follow-up with post installation monitoring/auditing of the new equipment for a few key items: namely lighting, sanitation, and griddle or fryer. We can take the hours of use of the new equipment under the new tenant’s operation and then back engineer what the utility consumption would have been under the same operating conditions using low efficiency equipment.

We may due data logging light sensors to confirm our assumptions about lighting operating schedule. We verified usage patterns of the equipment by conducting several audits and user surveys to check on daily cooking practices. Because the savings calculators for the major cooking appliances rely on a metric of pounds of food cooked per day, we audited the former tenant’s practices with staff interviews and site verification to determine typical daily weight of product used on equipment (such as fryer and charbroiler). We will do the same with the new tenant and adjust our estimates accordingly.