SV Laboratories at the forefront of electricity savings

The laboratories in the School of Life Sciences are packed with electrical and electronic equipment and walls and ceilings are covered in cables of all sizes. Research couldn't be carried out without electricity, but certainly with a little less! The very encouraging results of monitoring carried out in a number of laboratories are summarised here.

Reducing equipment consumption requires coordination and monitoring
Like many others, two motivated laboratories at ISREC institute looked into this question and reviewed their equipment to identify potential electricity savings. Which equipment should be switched off? Which should only be switched on when required? How can we cut back without disrupting research work? At the same time, the SV Sustainability Office and the SV Workshop were organising the installation of around a hundred electricity counters in the electrical cabinets on the first floor of the SV building, in order to gain a better understanding of electricity consumption in the laboratories.

Proof that kWh are being saved easily and sustainably

• The results speak for themselves: Switching off 2 freeze-dryers when not in use has saved 5,500 kWh/year.
• Valuable biological material has been sorted and grouped together, making 3 -20°C freezers unnecessary, representing 3200 kWh/year.
• Small instruments (e.g. heating blocks) are now on timers, and are therefore switched off at night and at weekends: a few dozen extra kWh are saved.

All in all, a reduction of between 13% and 22% in the average consumption of equipment in the area covered has been observed, which is equivalent to at least 300 journeys of the M1 train between Lausanne-Flon and EPFL.

This detailed, long-term electrical monitoring revealed other potential savings, as well as a number of limitations: The set temperatures of seven ultra-low temperature freezers have been raised to -77°C, reducing their electricity consumption by 10% (or 280 kWh per year and per piece of equipment). It is important to remember that this action reduces the response time in the event of a breakdown, and should under no circumstances be repeated on freezers containing precious samples. Laboratories are required to contact the workshop if in doubt. This study also confirms that equipment producing heat or cold is one of the biggest consumers of electricity in our laboratories. As far as lighting is concerned, switching off lights is not as easy as you might think: the campus central services are therefore currently deploying timers and presence sensors to reduce light consumption without disrupting users' activities.

So where do we go from here?
The SV community will be continuing its efforts, sustaining the changes that have been put in place and identifying other sources of energy savings.
Other projects involving sustainability and infrastructure are underway, for example concerning steam production in autoclaves and the replacement of certain vacuum pumps. Here, too, improvements in use or technological changes are leading to very significant KWh savings.

Now that research staff, workshop specialists and the SV Sustainability Office have been trained, the next savings opportunities will be quickly identified and implemented. Whose turn is it to switch off?