How Ponderosa High School Stopped Heating Empty Rooms

Ponderosa High School in Flagstaff, Arizona isn't a typical school when it comes to sustainability. Gardens, greenhouse classrooms, composting, rainwater collection, and hands-on environmental learning are woven right into the school day. The commitment is real — and it shows.

But even at a school doing so many things right, one persistent problem kept surfacing: no one was managing the HVAC system.

That responsibility had quietly fallen to janitorial staff — already stretched thin across repairs, cleaning, and the everyday demands of keeping a school running. There was no time to actively manage thermostats or build schedules around how the building was actually being used. So heating and cooling ran longer than necessary, conditioning empty classrooms and unoccupied offices without anyone noticing — or having the bandwidth to fix it.

The energy was being wasted. The solution just needed the right partner.

Through the Wells Fargo IN2 program — which both Ponderosa and KenergyAI are part of — the school launched a pilot project covering approximately 20,000 square feet. The deployment was straightforward:

• 14 ecobee thermostats
• 64 EnOcean sensors
• 1 KenergyAI gateway

But the real work happened in the intelligence behind it.

Ponderosa's building wasn't running on a simple schedule. County school staff used parts of the facility during the day. Students occupied classrooms on their own timetable. Meetings and activities spilled into weekends and off-hours. A basic timer couldn't account for any of that — and that's exactly where most systems fall short.

KenergyAI used historical occupancy patterns to automatically build schedules around how the building actually operated. That meant:

• Classrooms stayed comfortable when students were present
• Office spaces remained pleasant for staff during working hours
• Staff could adjust temperatures to their own individual comfort preferences
• Off-hour meetings and activities were still accommodated
• Energy stopped being spent on rooms with no one in them

The system didn't take control away from the people who work there, either.

Teachers and staff could still adjust temperatures to their own comfort. KenergyAI worked quietly in the background — reducing HVAC runtime during unoccupied periods without anyone having to think about it.

The result was more than an energy win.

It solved a real staffing problem — lifting a task no one had the capacity to manage off the shoulders of an already overextended facilities team. For a school that has made sustainability a core part of its identity, this is one more step toward making sure the buildings practice what the classrooms teach.

Energy results from this pilot are being collected and will be shared soon.