The University’s new energy engineer, as of late January, is Timothy Vann. As energy engineer, Vann focuses on energy efficiency in all of the University’s buildings including the River Campus and the Medical Center.
Vann aspires to look into and propose new projects to produce renewable energy and to reduce energy in the future. “Sustainability is the most important thing we need to accomplish in this next generation,” he says.
Vann is currently working on a metering system made up of a couple thousand meters measuring energy, electricity, hot water, chilled water, and steam. Now that they have reached critical mass, Vann is working on organizing the information gathered by the meters. His long term goal is to identify where the University’s energy is being used and where it is not being used as efficiently as it could be. From there, he will work to come up with solutions to maximize efficiency. It is clear that he wants both functionality and energy efficiency. He said, “I don’t want to sacrifice anybody’s mission. Everything should work properly.”
Other initiatives Vann will be looking in to include building retro-commissioning, solar photovoltaics projects and a web-based building energy dashboard for all River Campus buildings.
Vann was born and raised in Plattsburgh, New York, where he spent a lot of time at Lake Champlain and in the mountains. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1989 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Vann worked as a programmer, as a contractor, and in 2007 he began working at the Rochester Institute of Technology as an Energy Engineer and then most recently as a Design Engineer.
Outside of being an energy engineer, Vann spends time with his wife, whom he met here at the University of Rochester when they were students, and his two sons. He enjoys canoeing, hiking, travelling, and photography. He is looking forward to implementing positive changes at the University of Rochester over the years to come.
Written by Mariah Greico, Class of 2018