Westover Earns High Marks in Energy Competition

Middlebury, Connecticut – Despite a colder than normal winter, Westover School reduced its electricity use by 8.8% in February 2014, as compared to the average of its electricity use during the previous three Februaries.

As a result, Westover earned fourth place in this year’s Green Cup Energy Challenge from among the 19 New England boarding schools that posted results. The Green School Alliance’s (GSA) Green Cup Energy Challenge is an annual competition held for a month in winter and is designed to encourage schools across the globe to save electricity and to raise awareness of climate change and the importance of conserving natural resources.

The 19 schools in Westover’s group saved a combined 44,780 kilowatt hours this past winter, according to the GSA. “This year’s Energy Challenge included 314 schools, making it the largest electricity reduction competition for K-12 schools in the world,” said Katy Perry, director of the Green Cup Challenge. “The challenge has a global impact, but is divided into geographical regions to encourage local rivalries and to partially account for different weather patterns.” This year’s challenge saved more than 1 million kilowatt hours, representing 1.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide that would have otherwise entered the atmosphere.

During the Energy Challenge, participating schools used Building Dashboard, web-based software made by Lucid, to track competition standings and compare performance between schools. Teachers and students read their meters once a week and entered the readings into BuildingOS, the engine behind Building Dashboard. “Building Dashboard made it easy for everyone in the schools to visualize their electricity use, which I think really helped to inspire them to take action towards energy efficiency,” Perry said.

“Much of Westover’s success this year can be attributed to a program that replaced most of the School's less efficient lighting, particularly in the Fuller Athletic Center and its outside lighting, to high-efficiency LED lighting,” said Giselle Boyadjian, Westover’s Library Director who serves with Science teacher Michael Rowinsky as faculty advisors for the student Environmental Action Committee (EAC).

Business Manager Steve Ladd noted that much of the School’s energy savings was made possible through the efforts of Greenleaf Energy Solutions, as well as an energy efficient fund incentive provided through Connecticut Light and Power, which paid for 40% of the project and offered a low-cost loan for the remaining cost of the switch to LEDs. In its proposal, Greenleaf Energy Solutions estimated that the installation of the energy efficient lighting could save Westover approximately 2 million kilowatt hours over 15 years – a reduction of more than 3 million pounds of carbon dioxide or the equivalent of saving 1.5 million pounds of coal from being burned. Ladd noted that Westover’s Fuller Athletic Center is the first school gym in Connecticut to use LED lighting.

EAC Co-chair Ang Sherpa, a member of the Class of 2015 from Jackson Heights, New York, “was instrumental in measuring and calculating our School’s energy use from all sources through the competition,” Boyadjian said. “Taking measurements was complicated by the fact that Westover uses energy from three different sources: a co-generation plant that uses what would normally be wasted heat to supply additional energy, two sets of solar panel arrays, and the local electric company. Ang also needed to brave huge snow banks and bitterly cold temperatures to complete her weekly readings,” Boyadjian said.

Sherpa was a U.S. Green School Fellow in the Green School Alliance Student Climate & Conservation Congress (Sc3) held in West Virginia's National Conservation Training Center last summer. The Sc3 is a six-day summer program for 150 student environmental leaders that features speakers, including oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle and writers Bill McKibbin and Barry Lopez, as well as group discussion and work on personal action plans to bring back to their schools.

Sherpa will lead a presentation about the Green Cup Energy Challenge results to the school community with her EAC Co-chairs Nimat Muhammad, a member of the Class of 2015 from Newark, New Jersey, and classmate Irene Chung from Seoul, South Korea, and other EAC members.

Westover is a selective boarding and day school in Middlebury, Connecticut, with 205 students in grades 9-12 from 17 states and 20 countries. The School offers its students more than 20 Advanced Placement courses as well as signature programs in science, engineering, art history, and music.