Kelley Whalen has served as Energy Manager at ADTRAN for more than 18 years. ADTRAN is a 1 million square foot campus that has a myriad of uses from office space, distribution centers, and manufacturing. Kelley developed an energy management strategy from scratch to reduce operating expenses and promote sustainability, continuously improve energy efficiency, and leverage the end of useful live cycle and technology obsolescence. Kelley started with benchmarking the campus and measuring and monitoring campus energy performance, implementing a metering program, and having multiple energy audits performed to develop a list of energy conservation projects that could be implemented on campus. Some of these projects included a water-side economizer operation for chilled water plants, a daylight harvesting analysis, demand control ventilation, retro-commissioning, and a LED lighting retrofit. In 2022, buildings were reaudited with a focus on decarbonization projects to carb the company’s carbon footprint, seeking to become net zero by 2040. In 2023, he is aiming to expand the ADTRAN energy management program to be a global one that manages energy for all of ADTRAN’s 50+ locations. In his tenure at ADTRAN, Kelley has implemented over 100 ECMs and has reduced the EUI by 44% from 134 to 75 for a 1 million sqft facility. The campus was using 40,000,000 kWh/year and is now using 22,000,000 due to Kelley’s consistent and measured implementation of ECMs, saving ADTRAN over $11,000,000 throughout his career.

Kelley is the Vice President for the AEE Huntsville Chapter, serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of Valley Industries, and the Board of Governors for ASHRAE North Alabama. He is the recipient of the AEE Region II Energy Manager of the Year and the ASHRAE 2019 Region VII Regional Technology Award for the Commercial Building.