A Discussion on Occupant Engagement, Part II

(This is the second post in a three-part series, see part I below)

Q: Have you calculated a $ per KWh cost of the efficiency/savings vs the cost of the Pulse software?

APS: Not yet, but I would like to do so. It would be important to measure the persistence of savings first. This is something we will do in our second campaign. After that, we could come up with an estimate of the 52 week average energy savings percentage (over and above the pre-Pulse/campaign baseline) and apply that against the total electricity bill. In 2008 (pre-Pulse), our Ministry (about half of the building, plus other buildings) consumed 4828 GJ of electricity. In 2009 (post-Pulse), that figure was 3136 GJ, a saving of nearly 1700 GJ or 472 MWh. However, we need to normalize this figure to remove other buildings, different staffing levels, etc, so I don’t want to attribute all the savings to the retrofit / Pulse / campaign.

Q: How much money was spent on installing light switches, dimmers and occupancy sensors, and implementing Pulse’s monitoring software/hardware? And how does this amount compare with electricity cost savings?

APS: The lighting retrofit was approximately $100,000. We have a declining block rate structure that puts all savings (unfortunately) in Step 2, making it very challenging for any lighting retrofit to be cost-effective.  In addition, the pre-existing lights are T12 with electronic ballasts.  Replacing magnetic ballasts is far more cost-effective. The monitoring hardware and Pulse software was a small fraction of the cost of that overall bill. The reason why we did this was to demonstrate leadership, albeit the only way to transform the market is to fix the rate signal with an inclining block rate structure so that such investments become cost-effective. Read the rest of this entry »

A Discussion on Occupant Engagement, Part I

On April 28th Pulse Energy hosted a webinar on engaging buildings occupants in energy conservation.  Andrew Pape-Salmon, Director, Energy Efficiency Branch, BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, was gracious enough to take a break from his sabbatical and speak about the occupant engagement measures applied in part of his 150,000 sq ft office building that achieved a 12% savings on energy.  The 70+ webinar attendees responded very well to the moderator`s challenge to ask Andrew a lot of tough questions, and at the end of the webinar we were left with dozens of great questions that we simply did not have time to answer.  Therefore, we would like to use the questions as the seeds to a potentially very interesting discussion on occupant engagement here on our blog.  Andrew and his colleague Brooke McMurchy, who led the occupant engagement initiative at the Jack Davis building, have replied with their answers to the questions asked at the webinar; please add your comments by clicking the “comments” link below the title at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

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