Webinar Q&A: Using Energy Competitions to Reduce Building Energy Use

Last week’s webinar on energy competitions generated more questions than we were able to answer during the live Q&A session, so as promised we are answering all the questions left on the table here on our blog.  You can download the presentation slides (.pdf) or sign up to view and listen to the recording: Using Energy Competitions to Reduce Building Energy Use.

Q: Do you have any feedback on building occupants and their energy-related behaviours once a competition closes? Do they experience a proverbial competition ‘hangover’ and revert to their original energy practices?

A: Extreme measures used to conserve energy like extremely low lighting levels, or turning off hot water or the coffee maker are usually abandoned once the competition ends.  However, competitions often reveal sustainable practices that can continue year round; for example after a competition we have seen our clients turn off under-used refrigerators, remove lights in areas that don’t require them, naturally ventilate a server room by opening a door, and turn off unused computers and lights.

Q: Of the 9 competitions that Pulse was involved in, what was the average savings over the long run?

A: We saw savings up to 7% over a 6 month period, but many of the competitions completed just recently, so we don’t have average, long term savings for all of them.  Some of the buildings that did well during the competition due to extreme actions that were not sustainable over the long term, and therefore they experienced little to no persistent savings. Read the rest of this entry »

April suggested reading

Here are two interesting articles on energy conservation and  that we found last month.

The first one was posted in mid-February on CNET, but perhaps you missed it then just like we did.  It’s an update of an on-going study conducted by Oklahoma Gas & Electric in conjunction with the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory.  The study results so far indicate that people will significantly conserve electricity during peak demand if given price incentives and tools to modify usage: http://cnet.co/gY1HcJ.  The article states that:

“The first collection of data, taken from June through September, found that on average customers who were offered peak pricing, but no smart tools, reduced electricity use during peak periods by 33 percent. Customers using smart thermostats and offered peak pricing, reduced electricity use during peak times by as much as 57 percent.”

While this study is tracking the usage patterns of small businesses and residences, the underlying hypothesis that more control over energy usage will reduce consumption also appears to apply to larger commercial buildings, as evidenced by the results of an occupant engagement experiment that we helped one of our clients conduct. Read the rest of this entry »

Tips for Energy Managers in New Roles

During last week’s webinar entitled “Energy Managers: Carve Out Your Niche“, Pulse Energy’s Craig Handley used examples from his experience as RMIT University’s Energy Manager to illustrate the challenges that energy managers often face when they enter a newly created role in an organization.  Craig offered advice for energy managers on earning respect and credibility in an organization, tips on getting energy management plans approved by executives, and suggestions on how to embed energy management into organizational culture.  In addition, there was one more piece of advice that Craig prepared but did not have time to present at the webinar that we can present on this blog: how to keep things simple. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Energy Saving Tips for HVAC Controls

We recently hosted a webinar on energy saving tips for HVAC controls, presented by our very own BAS expert, James Smith.  The tips that James presented were basic maintenance and optimization procedures that save energy and are relatively easy to implement, but are often ignored and left undone.

The 5 tips included mechanical maintenance and controls optimization procedures that can be performed by in-house staff or by outside contractors:

1. Inspect Air Handling Unit (AHU) heating and cooling valves annually, to prevent simultaneous heating and cooling.
2. Inspect, clean, and lubricate mixing dampers seasonally to protect against simultaneous heating and cooling, frozen coils, and incorrect building pressure.
3. Calculate fresh air requirements automatically to protect against excess heating or cooling.
4. Calculate demand from zone devices to set the AHU temperature to eliminate over-cooling.
5. Reset boiler and chiller temperatures based on AHU valve positions to protect against excessively hot or cold water and to prevent unnecessary machine cycling.

James also explained why the effects of these energy wasting problems that these tips are meant to fix can be hidden and not easily detected without an inspection or other direct action.  Anyone who works with HVAC and BAS systems, as well as anyone who wants an interesting insight into the mechanical workings of their building will likely find this presentation interesting; check out the webinar recording for more details on each tip as well as a bonus tip.

We concluded the webinar with a Q&A session, and as is often the case we had a very engaged audience asking us lots of questions that we couldn’t answer in the time allotted.  James’ responses to most of the unanswered questions are below and we encourage you to join the discussion with new or follow-up questions or comments by adding a comment to this blog posting:

Read the rest of this entry »

Q&A Session from our “Reduce Energy in Schools and School Districts” webinar

Brian Branting, Energy Manager from BC’s School District #79, joined us for a very interesting webinar on reducing energy consumption in schools and school districts (we apologize for a few rough spots in the audio of the recording).  Brian presented how 30 facilities in his district reduced their energy consumption by nearly 20% for the 2009/2010 fiscal year, which amounted to a cost avoidance of over $250,000 on their 2009/2010 budget.  The two big keys to his success were establishing a successful energy conservation behaviour program that encouraged and supported school staff and students to reduce energy use, as well as optimizing the schools’ heating schedules for greater efficiency.

We had a very engaged audience who peppered us with many questions at this webinar, and unfortunately we ran out of time before we had the chance to answer them all.  Brian was nice enough to send us his answers to the unanswered questions via email, so now we can present the entire Q&A session here on our blog:

Read the rest of this entry »

A Discussion on Occupant Engagement, Part III

(This is the third post in a three-part series, see parts I and II below)

Q: Is there a way to identify the origin of the load through the dashboard?

APS: This all depends on the resolution of the monitoring. For the lighting retrofit, we could isolate it to the specific floors only, not individual offices. However, our engineer looked into purchasing wireless monitoring technologies that could measure each office space. This could be moved around and integrated into Pulse. We haven’t implemented anything like that yet. Frankly, it may not be advantageous to scrutinize consumption to that level. Feels too much like “Big Brother” watching your consumption.

Q: Are there provisions for inputting and analyzing facilities which do not have digital meters?

APS: We are starting a new project with schools in First Nation (Aboriginal) communities with electronic monitoring to come up with some indicators around per-student and per-square-meter consumption.  Once we have established some benchmarks, we plan to design a survey that non-monitored schools can use to identify saving opportunities, maybe using their power bill as the key indicator.  All in all, it is better to monitor. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »