Wednesday 5 October 2011

Energy Surveys can still be excellent value

Energy Surveys can still be excellent value

Organisations are still able to find substantial savings by undertaking a simple back-to-basics Energy Survey approach coupled with Monitoring and Targeting (M&T) maintains TEAM's Solutions Director Tim Holman.
Identifying target buildings is the first step in any energy survey programme.

Using M&T techniques such as benchmarking are useful to highlight where energy consumption is higher than that of similar buildings. Additional M&T techniques such as calculating the expected building energy consumption for given conditions (e.g. weather) and comparing this to actual energy consumption are also very useful in identifying buildings most in need of a survey. Dedicated M&T tools such as those available in the TEAM Sigma software can perform this type of analysis quickly.

Having an Energy Consultant undertake a Building Inspection can be an eye opening experience and a thorough look around a building can often turn up unexpected energy waste. The Energy Audit should assign some budget costs for implementation of the identified improvements. The values of potential savings almost always far outweigh the cost of the Energy Surveys.

Recommendations from surveys often include a number of common items including boiler replacement, lighting replacement and variable speed drive installation on motors. However, it is often the building occupants who hold the largest scope for achieving energy savings and these are typically no-cost measures. Building inspections often find examples of poor energy management practice: equipment left on when not in use, BMS controls set to manual override, set-point changed by occupants to ridiculous temperatures (i.e. cool to 16˚).These can normally easily be rectified with new procedures and by creating awareness.

It is really important that results of an energy audit are used as the basis for an action plan by the building manager. When implementing energy saving measures identified and rolling out a costed programme of improvements M&T must still play a key role. Ensuring that new operating regimes and control setting are adhered to is the job of an M&T system.

Utilising M&T to identify poor performing buildings and then organising an Energy Consultant to undertake Energy Surveys can really help focus resources where they are needed. The implementation of resulting energy saving measures then need to be tracked using M&T techniques to ensure savings are maintained and the good value from the Energy Survey is retained.

For further information and to download the full article published in the September issue of Energy and Buildings and Industry please click here.

Or contact:
TEAM (EAA Ltd)
Phone: 01908 690018
Email: enquiries@teamenergy.com
Web: www.teamenergy.com

Written by

Bruna Pinhoni

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