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12/19/2016 11:00 PMOn a hot summer day, which section of The Kate you’re seated in will no longer govern whether you feel hot or comfortable thanks to a major energy conservation project the town just completed.
Kate Executive Director Brett Elliott had been puzzled as to why some patrons coming to see the Met in HD on a summer afternoon would complain about being too hot while others did not. What the construction work uncovered was a cooling system issue dating from the 2007-’09 building conversion; some of the theater’s air vents dispensed chilled air while others did not. Now they all will.
“Crowds for the Met Opera in HD versus a sold-out crowd for a band concert have different needs. Now we’re going to be able to control and correct the temperature [for each],” said Elliott.
That fix to improve patron comfort is just one of the benefits of the $162,109 energy conservation project. The upgrades will also yield both energy savings and operating cost savings to the town which owns and maintains the building operated by the non-profit Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center. And the cost to complete all of this work to the town? Nothing.
That’s because of financial incentives offered by the utilities for installing conservation measures to reduce energy consumption and from grants made available through a state program under the Neighborhood Assistance Act (NAA). Already approved are $54,000 in utility-granted energy incentives and $114,500 in grants to the town from five corporations who needed the NAA program’s state tax credits that were approved by the State of Connecticut Department of Revenue Services for funding The Kate’s energy conservation project.
What did the funding pay for?
The main tasks were to upgrade the building’s heating and cooling system and to replace the incandescent and fluorescent lighting elements throughout the building and in the theater with new efficient LED lights.
First on the list was to install two new natural gas-fueled boilers in place of the aging—and failing—old oil-fired one. As part of this project, the thermostats, vents, piping, and variable air volume (VAVs) valves and fans were upgraded and matched to the new energy management system for the building. Now the building’s heating and cooling system can be controlled remotely — and if the system goes down for any reason, day or night, Brett Elliott will now get an alarm text on his phone.
It was as part of the work to upgrade the elements of the building’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, that PTE, the contractor, discovered various issues with the original system installation. For example, due to piping size mismatch, the cold air produced by the system apparently bypassed several of the theater house vents. Also, some of the HVAC system’s VAV’s were not connected to sensors for the right thermostats. The controls, therefore, were not for the rooms they were supposed to be for. Through this energy project, those issues were addressed.
The next major task was to replace all of the conventional lighting in the building with new energy-efficient LED lights. Installed in the theater itself were new LED bulbs that can be dimmed in the theater’s sconces and, by the end of this month, new overhead LED can lights in the theater house. Elliott spent a lot of time working with lighting suppliers to find LED theater-house lights that can be dimmed and bulbs that would retain the warm, yellower tones of typical theater lighting, rather than displaying the harsher blue colors of many LED lights.
“We spent a lot of time to get the right prototype for the dimmable bulbs. In the end, we selected an advanced, high-technology bulb geared towards theaters. These lights go down slowly,” said Elliott. “We also wanted lights that when you drive by the theater, the lighting should look warm and inviting. We worked hard to get that.”
The final element was to install 3M Window Film on the theater’s lobby atrium windows to reduce the solar heat gain of that room in the summer sun.
“This project wasn’t just a band-aid approach. It was a figure-out-how-to-do-it-right approach,” said Elliott of the project’s changes.
The town will also save on the $55,000 in annual operating costs it currently budgets for the building’s basic utilities and maintenance. The cost of electricity for the special theater lights are tracked on a separate meter and paid for by the non-profit Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center organization. The New England Energy Conservation Company, which identified needs and oversaw the installation of energy conservation measures at Town Hall and Acton Library as well as The Kate, estimates the town annual energy savings at The Kate could be up to $15,000 per year.