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Overview of the Texas LoanSTAR Monitoring Program
Abstract
The Texas LoanSTAR program is an eight year, $98
million revolving loan program, funded by oil overcharge
dollars, for energy conservation retrofits in Texas state, local
government and school buildings. The program began in
1988. Public sector institutions participating in the program
must repay the loans according to estimated energy savings
from an energy audit. This paper provides an overview of
the monitoring program at Texas A&M University, the prime
subcontractor to the Texas Governor's Energy Management
Center on the LoanSTAR Program.
As part of this program, a statewide energy Monitoring
and Analysis Program (MAP) has been established. The
major objectives of the LoanSTAR MAP are to: 1) verify
energy and dollar savings of the retrofits, 2) reduce energy
costs by identifying operational and maintenance
improvements, 3) improve retrofit selection in future rounds
of the LoanSTAR program, and 4) initiate a data base of
energy use in institutional and commercial buildings in
Texas.
Currently, the program is monitoring hourly data from
over two dozen building using public domain polling
procedures that collect information from microcomputerbased
field recorders supplied by several manufacturers.
Future efforts will include investigating the feasibility of
reducing energy monitoring costs by utilizing Energy
Management and Control Systems (EMCS)-based
monitoring and expand the program into additional sites.
Citation
Turner, W. D. (1990). Overview of the Texas LoanSTAR Monitoring Program. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu); Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /6593.