By Installation Energy Manager

The NAS Whidbey Island’s Tenant Energy Efficiency Competition pits major commands against one another to increase energy efficiency, reduce Navy utility bills, foster a culture of efficiency and make buildings work better. Winning the honors for first quarter of fiscal year 2015 is Naval Ocean Processing Facility (NOPF).

Led by Energy team leaders Lt. Cmdr. Marc Schuh and Chief Machinist’s Mate Jeremy Brewer, NOPF saved 181,300 kilowatt hours and $27,000 during the first quarter of 2015. This is enough energy to power the average home for over 15 years.

Schuh and Brewer were assisted by Tim Wenzel, Utilitiesman 1st Class Jamie Russ, Interior Communications Electrician 2nd Class (IC2) Liz Stark, Electrician’s Mate 2nd Class Mitch Huff and IC2 Sebastian Dennis.

The NOPF team initiated many energy efficiency measures to achieve the reduction. Heating and cooling costs were reduced by ensuring that “Dead Zones” and unoccupied zones where set to the appropriate temperatures or just not heated. With a large computer processing load, NOPF requires some cooling even in winter.

Taking advantage of cooler outside air, the team put chillers and cooling towers in “Free Cooling” mode rather than using energy intensive mechanical compressors to create cooling air. For the parts of the building that require heating, the team repaired and brought back on line a heat recovery unit. Heat taken away from the computers is extracted and used to warm building occupants.

While NOPF has a large computer load, it is much smaller than it was 25 years ago when the building was constructed. Transformers installed to handle heavy loads are now grossly oversized, and operate in a very inefficient manner. By optimizing the use of appropriately sized transformers, the team still meets all redundancy and load mission requirements while using less energy and saving dollars.

“I’m very proud of the entire team; their innovation and hard work really made a big difference in reducing the amount of energy consumed at NOPF,” said Installation Energy Manager, Chris Taylor.

Second place in the competition was the Security Building led by Chief Master-at-Arms Clayton Hewitt with 55.3 points and in third place with 53 points was the Tactical Support Center led by Electronics Technician 1st Class Erick Mueller.

NOPF received the Energy Trophy from Capt. Michael Nortier, NAS Whidbey Island Commanding Officer, and they will fly the Energy Flag for the next quarter and awarded a command movie or

Convergence Zone Party from MWR.