A Look at Education Buildings
Are they on multibuilding complexes?
How do they use energy and how much does it cost?
What types of equipment do they use?
Heating and Cooling Equipment
Reference 2: Heating and Cooling Equipment Definitions
Education buildings use mostly boilers or packaged heating for heating the building, with individual space heaters often used as a secondary heating device. For cooling, education buildings have mostly packaged air-conditioning or individual air conditioning units.
Table 8: Number and percent of education buildings by heating, cooling, and lighting equipment types
Lighting Types
Most (95 percent) education buildings use standard fluorescent lights. About half also use incandescent bulbs; only a small number use compact fluorescent, high-intensity discharge, or halogen lighting.
Reference 3: Lighting Type Definitions
Related link: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Lighting Systems Research Group
Commercial Refrigeration Equipment
Commercial refrigeration equipment is found in 31 percent of education buildings; 28 percent have refrigerated cases or cabinets and 13 percent have walk-in refrigeration units.
Computers
Education buildings use a large number of computers (8.0 million). There were 847 computers per thousand employees, the highest ratio for any commercial building activity. However, that ratio does not include students, and so it excludes a large number of potential users. In 1995, the total seating capacity of education buildings was 85 million. If the PC-to-employee ratio were recalculated with even a fraction of the number of seats added to the number of employees, the ratio of PCs and computer terminals to thousand users would be much lower.
This information is from the CBECS special topic report: "Personal Computers and Computer Terminals in Commercial Buildings"
Energy-Related Space Functions
Thirty-six percent of education buildings report using space in the building for commercial food preparation, such as kitchens, steam tables, or warming areas.
Five percent of education buildings report using space for activities requiring large amounts of hot water, such as a commercial laundry room or heated pool.
Continue: How do they measure up on conservation efforts?
Go to "What types of equipment do they use?" for other building types:
- Office
- Education
- Health Care
- Retail and Service
- Food Service
Specific questions may be directed to:
Joelle Davis Michaels
joelle.michaels@eia.doe.gov
CBECS Manager
URL: http://www.eia.gov/emeu/consumptionbriefs/cbecs/pbawebsite/education/educ_whatequip.htm
Release
date: August 2, 2000
File
last modified: January 3, 2001