Vermilion County Housing Authority – Soeuth Sok – 2017

Goals 

Vermilion, Ford and Dewitt County Housing Authorities, which provide affordable housing to low-income and vulnerable communities, want to improve their energy management practices through benchmarking. EDF Climate Corps fellow Soeuth Sok was enlisted to develop a comprehensive plan outlining the processes and systems needed for continued benchmarking and monitoring of energy use. 

Solutions

After gathering and aggregating utility data, Sok set up an energy managing system that allows each housing authority to track energy and water use, as well as portfolio-wide greenhouse gas emissions, to gain a better understanding of their buildings’ energy performance. From this, she identified which buildings to target. To continue this energy management initiative in the future, she developed data collection procedures and identified staff expertise in charge of managing the housing portfolio. Before her time was up, Sok performed an energy audit to identify cost-saving opportunities and possible energy efficiency projects.

Potential Impact

Moving forward, results from the utility benchmarking and the energy auditing survey can be used to provide the housing authorities with the tools and knowledge needed to tackle energy efficiency projects. If implemented, Sok’s energy efficiency projects could save Vermilion 8,830 kWh, DeWitt 2,943 kWh and Ford 3,154 kWh each in electricity, a combined savings of 14,927 kWh.