Sustainability at Lake Superior College

LSC’s Vending Miser Project

In an effort to save energy here at LSC, we have been installing Vending Misers and Snack misers on the vending machines located around the LSC campus.  They are sensors that shut off the machines and conserve energy when nobody is around to use them. The misers fit onto the back of the machines and the sensor activates it when someone is right in front of it. The Vending Misers cycle the refrigeration units every 2 hours to keep the drinks cold, and still conserve energy.

For the first part of our study we placed kilowatt meters on several random machines around the campus and monitored them for a week. One machine used 36.10 kilowatts of energy in one week without the Vending Miser on it. After the Vending miser was installed the energy consumption was down to 21.51 kilowatts in one week. If they all had vending misers on them that’s 14.59 kilowatts per machine per week of energy saved.  It’s worth noting that our study was done during spring semester.  The potential energy savings over summer semester could be much greater.

In total we have 23 pop machines and 5 snack machines. We would also save a lot of money if we removed a few of the pop machines. There are several locations where there are two or more machines very close to one another. If we got rid of one or two of them, it would save us almost $100 a year per machine in operating costs.

Currently we have installed Vending Misers on 7 different vending machines around the school. We do have more of them, and will be installing them in the near future. If you have any questions about them please ask someone on the Environmental Council.

Written by Lance Lindquist

Environmental Council Work Study