Heat impacts campus cooling

By Gerald Frazier
Daily Forty-Niner
 
The heat wave Cal State Long Beach endured the past few weeks caused a power shortage in California, and it made an enormous impact on campus.

CSULB's Physical Planning and Facilitites Management was required to shutdown air conditioning in 30-minute intervals last week, as part of state-wide energy conservation.

"During these heat waves, we have been maxing out the California electrical grid," said Tim Ball, the associate director of Facilities Management.

To regulate the electrical grid, the California Independent System Operator, a company that is responsible for ensuring that there is a sufficient amount of energy in the state, must reduce energy usage to satisfy the needs of the entire state. When there is a demand for energy, which the recent heat wave created, customers of I.S.O, such as CSULB has to meet those needs.

"Failure for people to do that would result in rolling blackouts," Ball said. "They [I.S.O] would have to start shutting off power in blocks of energy."

The campus is doing everything required to prevent rolling blackouts, Ball said. There has been a directive from the Governor's Office to start decreasing the energy load, to satisfy electrical demands due to the heat wave, he added.

Having to shut down power to reduce energy is just the second step in energy conservation, Ball said.

"In the state grid they have a warning, then they go to a stage one, then two, and three would be rolling blackouts," Ball said.

On Monday and Tuesday the campus was in a stage two alert, Ball said.

Although conserving energy is important, students and faculty seem to have taken the brunt of this process.

"It disrupts classes," said music professor Roger Hickman. "For learning purposes, no mind can work in that heat."

According to students, the Liberal Arts buildings seem to be the stuffiest buildings on campus.

"We get into big groups and it gets really hot and makes it hard to concentrate," said freshman marine biology major, Mya Folks.

There are some things that Facilities Management is doing to combat the heat without using electrical energy, Ball said.

"We have 400,000 gallons of water that we freeze every night andÖwe shut off our mechanical chillers and actually melt the ice to provide cooling to the campus." Ball said. "So we're not running any equipment during that time, which is pretty impressive."

Relief for the campus and the rest of California should come soon, Ball said.

"It usually occurs through the one peak period which is June through October," Ball said. "These are the critical months when it is more likely to occur."