Case Study: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill achieves up to 33% cooling efficiency improvement and $10K energy savings with Accruent EMS

How the school slashed energy use by syncing EMS with Events2HVAC and switching to LED, for cooling efficiency gains of 33% and heating gains of 17%

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Carolina Union, which uses Accruent EMS to schedule more than 2,000 events and 10,000 meetings annually, faced significant energy waste from running heating and cooling continuously across rooms regardless of occupancy. The Union wanted to use its EMS schedules to control its Johnson Controls MSEA HVAC system so that heating and cooling would only run in occupied rooms.

Accruent EMS worked with Streamside Solutions’ Events2HVAC to pull EMS schedules and send commands to the MSEA controls for 26 rooms (including a 5,200 sq. ft. great hall and a 3,100 sq. ft. auditorium), and the Union also converted to LED lighting. Over an eight‑month, weather‑normalized comparison with the prior year, electricity efficiency for cooling improved 33%, heating‑related electricity efficiency improved ~17%, chilled water efficiency rose 29%, and the combined measures yielded about $10,000 in electricity savings for the period.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill