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Boston University's Controls Retrofit Program Strategically Started at the Track and Tennis Center, and Cut Utilities by 20%
When Boston University finished replacing an old chiller, a decent portion of the budget remained. Ben Awuah and his boss saw an opportunity to kick off a BAS retrofit program with the leftover budget, and strategically started with the Track & Tennis Center.
Awuah is Assistant Director of Building Automation & Systems at Boston University, where he and four staff run HVAC and building automation across roughly 340 buildings on three campuses. The university's Climate Action Plan, adopted in 2017, commits it to cutting campus emissions 31% by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2040. Controls retrofits are one route there, alongside electrification and renewable investment.
There were three reasons the Track & Tennis Center was the right strategic choice for Awuah and his team. First, the HVAC was simple: three air handlers, two boilers, a chiller, some cabinet unit heaters, roughly 40 controllers to replace. Second, it sat next door to the facilities building, so the team could get there fast when something broke. And third, as Awuah put it at NexusCon, “we had leftover budget that nobody was really looking at.”
The retrofit ended up finding a problem the old system had been hiding. The building had a history of overheating, which the team had attributed to boiler controls running locally instead of being properly integrated. New controls resolved that and exposed a second cause underneath it: valves and actuators leaking by, masked for years by the failing automation. Boston University replaced them inside the same project.
The savings were provable only because the software was already in place. The building was live on Atrius, the university's energy monitoring platform, before the controls work began. Awuah puts the average reduction across utilities at 20%.
That number now does a second job. Awuah says he keeps it “in the back of my pocket” to argue for technology in the university's decarbonization work. The lesson he carries to the next building is a budgeting one. Inventory the existing condition first, or you'll finish the upgrade holding a list of problems nobody planned to pay for.
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When Boston University finished replacing an old chiller, a decent portion of the budget remained. Ben Awuah and his boss saw an opportunity to kick off a BAS retrofit program with the leftover budget, and strategically started with the Track & Tennis Center.
Awuah is Assistant Director of Building Automation & Systems at Boston University, where he and four staff run HVAC and building automation across roughly 340 buildings on three campuses. The university's Climate Action Plan, adopted in 2017, commits it to cutting campus emissions 31% by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2040. Controls retrofits are one route there, alongside electrification and renewable investment.
There were three reasons the Track & Tennis Center was the right strategic choice for Awuah and his team. First, the HVAC was simple: three air handlers, two boilers, a chiller, some cabinet unit heaters, roughly 40 controllers to replace. Second, it sat next door to the facilities building, so the team could get there fast when something broke. And third, as Awuah put it at NexusCon, “we had leftover budget that nobody was really looking at.”
The retrofit ended up finding a problem the old system had been hiding. The building had a history of overheating, which the team had attributed to boiler controls running locally instead of being properly integrated. New controls resolved that and exposed a second cause underneath it: valves and actuators leaking by, masked for years by the failing automation. Boston University replaced them inside the same project.
The savings were provable only because the software was already in place. The building was live on Atrius, the university's energy monitoring platform, before the controls work began. Awuah puts the average reduction across utilities at 20%.
That number now does a second job. Awuah says he keeps it “in the back of my pocket” to argue for technology in the university's decarbonization work. The lesson he carries to the next building is a budgeting one. Inventory the existing condition first, or you'll finish the upgrade holding a list of problems nobody planned to pay for.
Register for the next Nexus Labs event.
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This is a great piece!
I agree.