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As you’d expect all the energy managers and estates staff I spoke to are preparing extensively for September. One university has conceived 16 different scenarios with varying student numbers and space regulations. All 16 showed a major reduction in revenue and a big increase in remote teaching with the only contact time being in small group seminars.


One thing seems to be certain about the future – many university estates will get smaller. “We see Covid-19 as a catalyst for something that has been moving slowly for years. We hold 25% excess estate, we didn’t utilise our existing buildings as it was, and Covid has put this in the spotlight.”


How estates are gearing up for the new term


“It’s like everything we’ve been taught, everything we’ve been practicing for years has been thrown out of the window,” was how one energy manager described it. He, like the others I spoke to, had thrown the rule book in the bin as he manually overrode control systems and set points that were designed to minimise energy use.


Take the ventilation system as an example. Universities are now adapting to guidance from CIBSE and REHVA on how to ventilate buildings in readiness for September. These include some major changes, such as venting a building for two hours before and after it opens/closes and running ventilation systems at full power continuously. Another rule is that only fresh air can now be used to ventilate a building, meaning no thermal recovery (usually, hot or cold air would be continuously recirculated around the building, so the energy isn’t wasted). This equipment is energy hungry and come winter, buildings will be sucking air in at say 2°C, heating it to 20°C, then expelling that warm air back into the atmosphere, which of course means added costs (not to mention carbon).


“Our gas price has doubled during Covid”


Some universities have been stung by their energy suppliers, with the price for each unit of gas doubling to around 6p/kWh. This is because they took out long-term contracts with fixed prices, but to get the best price they had to guarantee a minimum purchase volume. With demand falling, several universities I spoke to had not been able to meet their obligations and so the remaining surplus had to be sold back to the market at a loss.


To understand this problem, I spoke to an energy market expert within Siemens. He said this was a double-sided problem: “The gas market is fundamentally weak at the moment, irrespective of Covid,


have to cover the difference.”


Some universities are in the middle of multi-year contracts, and a second peak or deep recession could send gas prices tumbling even further. “What would you do in their shoes?” I asked him. “The first thing I’d do is check their contract and weigh up all the options. These types of contracts are very complex,” he said, “so you need to go through it very carefully and then start a discussion with your energy supplier.”


What will change as a result of Covid?


Every energy manager I spoke to said they expected September to bring changes in working practices for staff and students. These changes present opportunities for estates teams to adopt new technology. “I think working patterns will change – more teaching and working remotely – these are new drivers for things like additional sensors in a building.”


As we have heard, many estates teams had limited ability to remotely control systems and devices across the estate. This will lead to changes in the way universities procure new buildings. The design of controls will be different: “We always used to ask for integration of systems like lighting. We always asked for that, but it was value engineered out. I think this will change in the future.”


One energy manager told me: “When we issue a procurement spec for new builds and refurbs, I will want them to include technology that gives me more granularity of data and better controls. I want a supervisory control system that brings all traditional building services into one place e.g. lighting, heating as well as occupancy and ventilation.


“I want all local control systems to be able to communicate with and take instructions from the supervisory system. I don’t necessarily want to be able to change the logic of the local controller, but I do want to be able to switch all lights off in a building remotely, for instance.”


and we have seen multi-year lows in prices.” The crisis just added greater uncertainty, and global gas demand is now even lower than before. “Because of the way the gas market is trading currently, it’s likely some universities will be losing money. If they were forecasting to use 1000 therms of gas in a month but only used 500, they may be liable for the unused capacity they bought. If they fixed at 40p/ Therm and the market is now trading at half that price, they will


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