Valladolid Municipal Energy Agency: The City Council is committed to energy efficiency in schools

Valladolid City Council has seventy school buildings with their corresponding boiler rooms. 21 of these were over 25 years old, which meant some losses in comfort, in energy consumption and therefore in CO2 emissions.

In 2011, the City Council of Valladolid signed the Covenant of Mayors and, through the corresponding Sustainable Energy Savings Plan, committed to the saving of CO2 emissions. One of the actions of the SEAP was saving emissions by changing and renovating the boilers if possible to biomass.

After conducting a study of the rooms, one of the boilers of these centres which had diesel fuel was replaced by biomass. Unfortunately, this was not possible in the rest due to the availability of spaces. The fuel used in these boilers is natural gas. This was chosen because, being unable to install biomass boilers, natural gas was the most efficient and least polluting of the rest of the fuels.

The new boilers installed are condensing boilers and, in the renovation of the room, high efficiency elements such as electronic pumps, flow regulators and remote management of the entire system have been installed.

This is a practically integral reform of the equipment installed in the boiler room, keeping the installed thermal power and substantially improving the efficiency of the equipment, such as boilers and circulation pumps. Additionally, the security of the system has been increased by including elements such as the new gas detection control unit, the renewal of the power supply and control system and the doors with fire protection in the pre-boiler room. Greater control over energy consumption has been provided to the equipment through energy meters, located in the primary circuits of the installation.

The telemonitoring system of the boilers allows the management of the room, starting and stopping of boilers and pumping system depending on the calendar and school schedule as well as the indoor and outdoor temperature. It also allows the administration of incidents with the maintenance company and with the Education Service in charge of school centres.

The savings achieved with these renovations are 1,034 MWh / year and 211.84t of CO2 emissions.

This renovation was funded by the municipality’s own funds, making it in three phases corresponding to three accounting budgets. The project was finished in summer of 2019.