Supervisors want to cut energy costs but first must know how much power their building uses now. A smart move is checking energy use against similar buildings, called benchmarking. But before that happens, they need exact numbers on their building’s energy use. Once those numbers show up, the real game begins—finding ways to slash energy use and save a lot of money. Knowing where you start is like holding a treasure map before a big hunt—it’s the secret to lower bills and helping the planet. If making your building energy-smart sounds good, knowing your energy use is the key to unlocking huge savings. Keep going to see how this path can totally change your building’s future.
Establishing Energy Use
Facilities use power in a number of different kinds. Supervisors need to review energy use documents and also include them by fuel kind for a 1-year duration. To identify total center power usage, convert each annual fuel use overall to its Btu equivalent, and after that add them up.
It is important to consist of all gas – electricity, natural gas, gas, and also oil – in the estimations. As soon as the total energy usage has been figured out, managers ought to normalize it to permit contrasts with use in various other facilities.
Supervisors can make use of numerous techniques to contrast center energy usage, but a widely accepted procedure is the energy usage index (EUI). The EUI, expressed in Btu per square foot annually, is the overall power use of a center split by its total occupied or conditioned square footage. Unconditioned areas are usually omitted.
The EUI has drawbacks. It doesn’t stabilize power usage for environmental adjustments. Also, the EUI does not makeup variants in making use of comparable facilities. As an example, two office buildings may have different EUI values, due to various tenancy schedules. One may be occupied for 10 hrs every day, while the other is occupied for 24 hours a day.
Benchmarking Energy Usage
The trick to effective benchmarking using the EUI takes care choice of centers. There are 2 sources for benchmarking EUI data: released data and other upkeep supervisors.
There are a variety of various resources for published EUI information, including government publications, professional organization reports as well as power administration handbooks. One of the most thorough resources for such information is Industrial Buildings Energy Intake as well as Expenses from the United States the Department of Power.
The magazine notes ordinary EUI worths for a series of building types differentiated by such aspects as age, size, environment, tenancy schedules, building as well as a power source. By selecting one of the most ideal building groups from the data, maintenance managers can estimate their capacity for power savings in their centers.
Picking preservation targets
As soon as a supervisor has determined a center’s energy savings possible, the following step is picking areas of emphasis. The secret to effective decreases is concentrating efforts on areas that offer the best capacity and also the highest possible rates of return on the investment. As soon as those steps are applied, managers can look in other places. The best possibility for better energy effectiveness in many centers depends on the major energy-using systems: refrigerators, cooling down towers, boilers, and also lights.
Lighting systems provide possible energy financial savings via changes in operations and maintenance. Prior to considering significant light substitute or upgrade programs, however, make sure the existing system runs efficiently as well as properly.
Tour the center. In the number of areas are lights left on when nobody is in the room? What controls are set up on light systems? If you locate greater than a couple of instances in which lights are running in empty areas, think about setting up automated light controls, such as tenancy sensing units. Energy financial savings accomplished by automatic controls usually pay for their installment in one to 2 years when you find out what’s happening.
Next off, review fluorescent illumination system maintenance. Even with the reduced labor expenses and greater efficiency related to group relamping, lots of facilities continue to replace burnt-out lamps on a place basis. By team relamping when lights get to 70-80 percent of rated life, labor expenses are cut by 90 percent. Average light degrees also boost, as lamps are replaced prior to a light output having degraded.
Finally, take into consideration the efficiency of the source of lights. Consider replacing incandescent bulbs with fluorescent or compact fluorescent lamps. Upgrade basic fluorescent lights to lights with high-efficiency electronic ballasts.
