University Housing submitted the attached Scope Change request to the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) to transfer the key contact for the Dump and Run grant from Housing to Facilities & Services.
The power consumption at the Busines Instructional Facility (BIF) is lower this week, as students leave for spring break, and staff transition to working form home. Stay tuned for additional screen shots as the COVID transition continues.
Hello all,
Shantanu and I have held a few planning meetings with Marc and Kasey from the YMCA for Dump & Run. We’ve talked with F&S communicators and the staff who will be clearing out of the space we intend to use. Shantanu has put together a draft communications plan, and he identified an improved collection container which we can purchase with the Student Sustainability Committee funds. We also began planning for a community drop off location that would not be at the F&S building.
On Friday, Bryan Johnson arranged a quick phone call with Shantanu, Bryan, me, and Joe Glass at Housing. We discussed the changes in campus and the anticipated student behavior, related to living in the residence halls. We talked about the potential for several students leaving at random dates throughout the remainder of the semester, and how we could potentially still collect materials. We also talked about the possibility of needing to cancel entirely for this year. Ultimately, that decision will need more clarity about who is here in May. Because we will not know which students choose to come back to campus after spring break until at least March 23, we are going to have a follow up discussion on 3/25.
In the meantime, I am cancelling the meeting we had scheduled for tomorrow. Our next group meeting will be on April 14 at 1pm, and it will be a Skype call.
Thank you,
Morgan
Please see attached the meeting minutes from the meeting on March 16th. Also attached are the slides from this meeting.
Attended by: Yanfeng Ouyang, Shelly Zhang, Morgan White, Stacey DeLorenzo, Sarthak Prasad, Weichen Li, Rui Feng She, Barb Robbins, Paul Jensen, Gina Lee-Olukoya, Dementro Powell.
All, Truncated week for me as I was out of the shop on Wed – Fri recuperating. On Tuesday night I was hit by a car on my bike ride home. No injuries beyond some scrapes and sore muscles. I was very lucky it wasn’t much worse.
Ultimately, we have a long way to go when someone who rides as defensively and as safely as I do can get hit by a car on a quiet residential street.
This week I’ll be meeting with my newly-hired Program Assistant to work out his schedule and responsibilities. I’ll be picking up more bikes from the warehouse, meeting with a student design group for transportation/climate issues (Design For America’s “Social Hack”), and building/scrapping bikes as needed.
The numbers:
Visitors: 63
Sales: $32
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
In order to reach the iCAP objective of 25,000 MWh/year of solar energy by FY25, additional panels will need to be installed. Large scale, ground mounted panels appear to be the least expensive route towards achieving the FY25 objective.
Dear Stacey, Morgan, and Prasad,
The CEE research team (including Shelly, Weichen, Ruifeng, and I) has held two weekly meetings and discussed our ongoing project. Below is a summary of the ongoing efforts:
As for the next step, we wonder if there is a good time to schedule a quick interview with you, and/or the stakeholders you mentioned last time? The purpose is to understand the design options and restrictions (i.e., types of barriers, guideways, and/or booth-location choices).
Thank you.
Yanfeng
All, Happy March! Looks like it’s coming in like a lamb for a change.
Still slow around here as far as visitors are concerned. On Friday of last week we got 7 bikes donated, all of which will be junked or passed along to Salt & Light (3 kids’ bikes). That’ll give the student staff something easy to do this week. Elsewhere: Our grinder wheel bit the dust so we’ll be all analog on filing housing and cleaning parts until that is replaced. Less electricity use = more sustainable!
This week I’ve got an interview for a student worker, our Fix-a-Flat class on Thursday and on I’ll be setting up some of my staff to have key-access when I’m away.
The numbers:
Visitors: 45
Sales: $132
Membership: 1 for $30
Tires/tubes: 4 for $49
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Good morning Morgan,
I have gathered the numbers that correspond to an acre of solar cover.
The estimate is that an acre of solar canopy could generate 760,536 kWh annually (this estimate takes into account the weather patterns of our location and possible shading/system inefficiencies).
I remember you saying that right now the University pays $0.05 per kWh. Our solar farms are charged $0.045 per kWh that they generate. This means that $0.005 is saved for every kWh generated. That can be used to estimate that an acre of solar canopy would save roughly $3,800 per year.
I thought that I would also include the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s estimate for what a solar retailer would charge per kWh of electricity in our area: $0.036. This would mean that $0.014 could be saved per kWh on a solar canopy system, or roughly $10,650 per acre.
Let me know what else I can find,
Ryan Day
The meeting minutes from the Resilience Team's meeting on 2/28/2020 is attached.
East Central Illinois Master Naturalists just formed a Pollinator Taskforce. They are focused on getting more pollinator plants into the community and planning programs associated with pollinators and pollinator plants.
The Extension team created some wonderful handouts that have native plant suggestions for 5 types of habitat. We have been handing those out like crazy. PDFs can be found at (https://extension.illinois.edu/cfiv/pollinator-pockets).
We have the pollinator pocket program (see link above)
Educational Programs held (just ECIMN, does not include programs organized by master gardener programs):
March 18, 2019 – Making Pollinator Habitat Work on the Modern Landscape
May 16, 2019 – Wildflowers
July 15, 2019 – Champaign Prairie Areas
July 22, 2019 – Buzz on Native Bees
August 19, 2019 – Illinois Monarch Project
January 27, 2020 – Native Plants in the Landscape
They just had a table at the Mudpuppy festival and had information on pollinators for children
The Master Gardener program in Vermilion County is mostly organic (unless something crazy happens). The Master Gardeners in Champaign put in a native pollinator garden last year at the IDEA garden on campus.
In the training for MG and MN we talk about pollinators, native plants, and pest management.
I am on the team that did the Retrocommissioning project in 2018 and I would be happy to share some of our knowledge from that process. Below is the link to a presentation of that project that we took to a Big Ten energy conference. Some of our main takeaways are that the combination of chilled beams, dual HX wheels, coil sizing, occupancy ventilation, and thoughtful building pressurization have led to one of the most efficient buildings on campus. Also, the heat pumps work well to heat/cool with electricity, but would be optimal if there were more of a reheat load, or a hot water loop to send reject heat to a neighboring building in summer, which campus is looking into in certain locations.
https://www.fs.illinois.edu/services/utilities-energy/energy-conservation/rcx-energy-results
Andy Robinson, LEED-AP, CEM
DDC Specialist, F&S Energy Services - RCx
All, I only worked Monday and Tuesday last week as I had a family emergency out of town. Those two days were slow. I picked up some bikes from the warehouse to keep everyone busy. Those bikes are coming along.
This week is business as usual. I’ll look to reschedule some of the meetings I missed in my absence, pick up a couple more bikes, and box some more stuff up for our move.
The numbers:
Visitors: 27
Sales: $106
Membership: 1 for $30
Tires/tubes: 4 for $23
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Hello everyone,
I am happy to report that our Dump and Run site visit last Wednesday was successful! We will be using the Truck Bay at F&S for this year’s collection space, thanks to Dr. Attalla, Dave Boehm, and Pete Varney. The address is 1501 S. Oak Street, and Mike Doyle and Marc Alexander said it will serve the collection space needs very well. Additionally, the Zero Waste Coordinator at F&S, Shantanu Pai, will take on an active role for Dump and Run this year.
Our vision is to transition Dump and Run from a “YMCA-run event that campus helps” to a “campus-run event that the YMCA helps.” Certainly this will take time (more than one year) and there are many details to work out, so please remember that the collaboration for this overall program will only be strengthened by this shift. Shantanu, Marc, and I are meeting this Wednesday, and we will provide a more detailed status update at the next team meeting on March 10.
If you have any questions or suggestions in the meantime, please let me know. Thanks again for all the thought and consideration that this group has put in to this program and finding workable solutions. I’m very excited for the future of Dump and Run!
Sincerely,
Morgan
This week (2/10 - 2/14) I distributed the letter to the offices in the NRSC to inform them of this composting project. We hope to collect the names and contact information in order to conduct a training and inventory how many supplies are needed. I also continued working on the composting guide for future projects.
Meredith Moore also met with Shantanu Pai, Zero Waste Coordinator, to discuss formalizing our procedures for other campus entities interested in starting composting projects.
All, Business as usual last week. The Scottish dude finished his build-a-bike. He only came in, too, because his German friend did a B-a-B as well and talked it up. Nothing beats good word of mouth. He was positively giddy about the whole thing and never got discouraged or frustrated by the process. The highlight for me was bending back a canti brake boss using the hole in the end of a crescent wrench. It’s not perfect but it’s functional enough. That’d make a good motto for us.
I’ll head to the warehouse this week to grab a few more bikes. I’ll also schedule a couple training sessions with my staff to refresh on some repair basics .
The numbers:
Sales: $428.50
Bike (refurb): 1 for $180
Bike (B-a-B): 1 for $30
Memberships: 3 for $90
Tires/tubes: 4 for $17
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Please see attached the meeting minutes from the kickoff meeting for this project.
Attended by: Yanfeng Ouyang, Shelly Zhang, Morgan White, Stacey DeLorenzo, Sarthak Prasad, Weichen Li, Rui Feng She.
Attached are the meeting minutes from the iWG meeting on 2/17/2020. This meeting focused on discussing the resilience objectives.
