Energy
crunch not affecting CSULB
Ecology:
Cal State Long Beach does not suffer as
heavily from problems with supplying power
to the school and dorms.
By
Betsy Truberg
On-line Forty-Niner
Katie
Hamor currently has about 12 electrical
appliances in use in her dorm room on campus,
including two computers, a refrigerator,
a microwave and a PlayStation. The 20-year-old
music and creative writing major brings
extra power strips to accommodate her electrical
needs.
Hamor
is one of many college students who use
an abundance of electrical appliances in
the Residence Halls. Surprisingly, however,
unlike other universities around the nation
that need rewiring to help supply power
to the overloaded dorm rooms, Cal State
Long Beach's dorms, which range from 20
to 50 years old, do not have a problem supplying
power to the appliances, director of housing
Stan Olin said. The Associated Press reported
that more electrical outlets and distribution
panels are being added to the dorms at schools
such as Miami University.
"Students
are bringing electrical appliances that
weren't invented when some of the dorms
were built in 1959," Olin said. "If
we were to build a new residence building,
this would be a consideration, but the dorms
currently are not having a problem with
the use of electricity."
Barney
Wright, assistant director of maintenance
for housing, said that appliances today
are more efficient than they used to be,
and that people are more energy conscious,
so electricity is saved.
"We
get a block of kilowatt hours," he
said. "If we go above it, it's a much
higher rate, but we stay in the rate that's
allocated to us." Wright added that
many students are using laptop computers
in the dorm rooms, which helps conserve
electricity.
The
campus Residence Halls have done their part
to help conserve energy, Olin said. Incandescent
lights were switched to fluorescent lights
in the dorms as well as all across campus.
Associate Director of Facilities Management
Tim Ball agreed that the residence halls
are not using or wasting a lot of electricity
like other parts of campus are. According
to Ball, the University Library, the Liberal
Arts buildings and the Fine Arts buildings
consume the most energy.
"People
leave windows open all the time, so we're
fighting to maintain proper temperatures,"
he said. "The system works twice as
hard to heat or cool these spaces when the
windows and doors are open, and it adds
wear and tear to our equipment."
Ball
said that leaving the windows open in the
dorms is not a problem because they do not
condition the buildings to be warm or cool.
Despite
the high electrical usage of certain buildings,
Ball said that since the 1999-2000 school
year, an approximate 31 percent reduction
in annual utility demand was achieved even
though the campus has grown by 26 percent
since then. Utility demand was reduced by
15 percent through conservation methods
over the past seven years, he said. This
reduction was due to a change from individually
powered buildings to a central plant that
powers the whole campus that occurred seven
years ago.
"The
central plant provided a shifted two megawatts
of unpeak power, which is a lot, to 20,000
homes in nearby areas," Ball said.
Unfortunately,
CSULB's electrical bills have more than
doubled in the past five years due to higher
prices at Edison, the supplier of electricity
on campus.
"Five
years ago, it was five cents per kilowatt
hour, and now it is 12 cents," Ball
said.
Rooms
with computers contribute to heavy electricity
usage because they are more difficult to
keep cool, Ball said. "One computer
that is on is the equivalent to one and
a half people." While the Horn Center
has many computers, it "operates efficiently"
because it has its own heating and cooling
equipment, he said.
Ball
recommended that people join the electricity-conservation
effort by keeping the windows closed inside
conditioned buildings, using flat-screen
monitors or laptop computers and setting
computers and printers to their power-saving
modes.
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