The Daviess County Security Center is not 20 years old yet, but the county is looking for ways to upgrade it. With the jail in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week some of its systems are aging faster than might normally be anticipated. New technologies are now available that did not exist when the jail was designed. Now, county officials are preparing to begin pouring over the numbers from an extensive energy audit in hopes of finding some utility and equipment operations savings at the jail. The county received a final report from the energy firm Ameresco on their findings on the operations at the jail.
"This study started some time ago," said President of the Daviess County Commissioners Nathan Gabhart. "It has been an exhaustive process. They have literally counted each light bulb and each ballast."
The company has put together a plan to upgrade lighting, water, heating and air conditioning and in the long run save the county money. To get there though, the county would have to spend $1.4 million.
"Currently, we have expenses every year," said Gabhart. They presented some numbers here with a 10-year return on investment which is not too bad. It's much better than we started off."
Ameresco managed to cut the initial outlay proposal by $160,000. The company suggests spending $453,000 to improve the lighting, $353,000 on water conservation, $553,000 replacing the rooftop units and $85,000 for building automation system upgrades. "For the energy savings, we are going to spend $600,000 more than we would have otherwise," said Gabhart.
The report contends that a lot of savings can be made by replacing units early that are expected to wear out as the jail ages. "They projected we will have $733,000 in capital outlay over the next 10 years," said Gabhart.
County officials say that while the numbers look good on paper, they want to dig around and make certain the savings will really be there. "On paper it looks like a good deal," said Gabhart. "If we go ahead and replace the lighting, install new plumbing systems and the HVAC systems then in 10 years you have $100,000 per year in savings. Taking it from theory to reality, that's the catch. We're going to dive down into these numbers and make certain we are making a good business decision."
Gabhart, a couple of members of the Daviess County Council, Sheriff Jerry Harbstreit and Chief Deputy Gary Allison will be reviewing the proposal.
Daviess County officials point out that the energy audit has cost the county no money so far.