Courtesy : Bizee

Energy management

What is Energy management

Definition

Simply put, energy efficiency means using less energy to get the same job done – and in the process, cutting energy bills and reducing pollution. Many products, homes, and buildings use more energy than they actually need, through inefficiencies and energy waste. Energy efficiency is one of the easiest ways to eliminate energy waste and lower energy costs. It is also one of the most cost-effective ways to combat climate change, clean the air we breathe, help families meet their budgets, and help businesses improve their bottom lines. Millions of American consumers and businesses choose or invest in energy-efficient products.

Examples of energy efficiency

Anywhere that energy is used, there is an opportunity to improve efficiency. Some products, like energy-efficient light bulbs, simply use less energy to produce the same amount of light. Other products don’t use energy directly, but they improve the overall efficiency and comfort of a house or a building (such as thermal insulation or windows).

• Light bulbs: An LED light bulb that has earned the ENERGY STAR label uses 70-90% less energy than an incandescent light bulb, while providing the same illumination.
• Windows: Energy-efficient windows are made with materials that reduce heat exchange and air leaks, which means you don’t need as much energy to heat or cool a space.
• Insulation: Adding more insulation to an attic keeps the warm air inside from escaping in the winter. In the summer, it keeps hot air out. With good insulation, you won’t need to use as much energy to keep your house warm in the winter or cool in the summer.
• Smart thermostats: Smart thermostats are Wi-Fi enabled devices that control heating and cooling in your home by learning your temperature preferences and schedule to automatically adjust to energy-saving temperatures when you are asleep or away. They can help you lower your energy bills by not spending money to heat or cool an empty house.
• Computer power management: Computers can be set to automatically enter a low-power “sleep” mode when not in use.
• Homes. The typical household spends nearly $1,900 each year on energy bills and could save 24% or more (about $450) each year by upgrading to efficient ENERGY STAR certified products.

Energy efficiency protects the environment

Most light switches and outlets pull electricity from nearby power plants. These power plants typically burn fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal. A biproduct of burning fossil fuels is the release of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change. More information on greenhouse gases.

These power plant emissions also contain other harmful air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter, that lead to unhealthy air. Learn about common air pollutants.

Fossil fuels are also often burned directly to heat our buildings, such as in furnaces and boilers, and for water heating and cooking. This can impact indoor air quality in your home, as well as contribute to outdoor air pollution. By using energy more efficiently, we can help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollution, fight the threat of climate change, and help to protect our health and the environment.

Energy efficiency saves money

By lowering energy use, energy efficiency reduces monthly energy bills and makes energy more affordable for businesses and families. Some energy-efficient products cost more to buy than other options, but they typically save you money over the long term. For example, an energy-efficient electric heat pump water heater could cost about $700 more than a standard electric water heater, but the energy savings typically add up to $3,500 over the life of the equipment. As you can see, the higher purchase price is more than offset by ongoing bill savings, reducing energy costs for consumers and businesses. To address this initial cost barrier, many utilities offer rebates and discounts ranging from $150 to $1000 off the cost of a heat pump water heater. Find information on rebates and other discounts.

Energy efficiency helps address energy equity

By reducing monthly energy bills, energy efficiency can lessen the strain of paying for energy, especially for families with high energy burdens – meaning a larger percentage of their income goes to paying energy bills than the average household. Installing energy-efficient products like light bulbs, windows, or efficient appliances can help to bring down a household’s energy burden, making energy more affordable. Families experiencing energy insecurity can face the difficult choice between paying monthly energy bills or putting food on the table. Energy efficiency can help households financially and improve the health, comfort and safety of families in their homes.

ENERGY STAR can help you find energy-efficient products and homes

ENERGY STAR is the simple choice for energy efficiency, making it easy to find products that will save you money and protect the environment. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ensures that each product that earns the label is independently certified to deliver the efficiency performance and savings that consumers have come to expect. Find ENERGY STAR certified products.

ENERGY STAR certified homes are at least 10% more energy efficient than homes built to code and achieve a 20% improvement on average while providing homeowners with better quality, performance, and comfort. Search for ENERGY STAR certified homes.

ENERGY STAR helps American businesses save money and cut pollution

Businesses can also save money and help protect the environment by making their buildings more energy efficient. ENERGY STAR certified buildings use 35 percent less energy than typical buildings. Learn more about how businesses can save energy.

How best to manage your energy consumption?

We identified four steps to the energy-management process above. We’ll cover each of them in turn:

1. Metering your energy consumption and collecting the data

As a rule of thumb: the more data you can get, and the more detailed it is, the better.

The old school approach to energy-data collection is to manually read meters once a week or once a month. This is quite a chore, and weekly or monthly data isn’t nearly as good the data that comes easily and automatically from the modern approach…

The modern approach to energy-data collection is to fit interval-metering systems that automatically measure and record energy consumption at short, regular intervals such as every 15-minutes or half hour. There’s more about this on our page about interval data.

Detailed interval energy consumption data makes it possible to see patterns of energy waste that it would be impossible to see otherwise. For example, there’s simply no way that weekly or monthly meter readings can show you how much energy you’re using at different times of the day, or on different days of the week. And seeing these patterns makes it much easier to find the routine waste in your building.

2. Finding and quantifying opportunities to save energy

The detailed meter data that you are collecting will be invaluable for helping you to find and quantify energy-saving opportunities. We’ve written an article that explains more about how to analyze your meter data to find energy waste.

The easiest and most cost-effective energy-saving opportunities typically require little or no capital investment.

For example, an unbelievable number of buildings have advanced control systems that could, and should, be controlling HVAC well, but, unbeknown to the facilities-management staff, are faulty or misconfigured, and consequently committing such sins as heating or cooling an empty building every night and every weekend.

(NB “HVAC” is just an industry acronym for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning. It’s a term that’s more widely used in some countries than others.)

And one of the simplest ways to save a significant amount of energy is to encourage staff to switch equipment off at the end of each working day.

Looking at detailed interval energy data is the ideal way to find routine energy waste. You can check whether staff and timers are switching things off without having to patrol the building day and night, and, with a little detective work, you can usually figure out who or what is causing the energy wastage that you will inevitably find.

Detailed energy data is the key to finding the easiest energy savings
(chart created using Energy Lens software)

And, using your detailed interval data, it’s usually pretty easy to make reasonable estimates of how much energy is being wasted at different times. For example, if you’ve identified that a lot of energy is being wasted by equipment left on over the weekends, you can:

1. Use your interval data to calculate how much energy (in kWh) is being used each weekend.
2. Estimate the proportion of that energy that is being wasted (by equipment that should be switched off).
3. Using the figures from a and b, calculate an estimate of the total kWh that are wasted each weekend.

Alternatively, if you have no idea of the proportion of energy that is being wasted by equipment left on unnecessarily, you could:

1. Walk the building one evening to ensure that everything that should be switched off is switched off.
2. Look back at the data for that evening to see how many kW were being used after you switched everything off.
3. Subtract the target kW figure (ii) from the typical kW figure for weekends to estimate the potential savings in kW (power).
4. Multiply the kW savings by the number of hours over the weekend to get the total potential kWh energy savings for a weekend.

Also, most buildings have open to them a variety of equipment- or building-fabric-related energy-saving opportunities, most of which require a more significant capital investment. You are probably aware of many of these, such as upgrading insulation or replacing lighting equipment, but good places to look for ideas include the Carbon Trust and Energy Star websites.

Although your detailed meter data won’t necessarily help you to find these equipment- or building-fabric-related opportunities (e.g. it won’t tell you that a more efficient type of lighting equipment exists), it will be useful for helping you to quantify the potential savings that each opportunity could bring. It’s much more reliable to base your savings estimates on real metered data than on rules of thumb alone. And it’s critically important to quantify the expected savings for any opportunity that you are considering investing a lot of time or money into – it’s the only way you can figure out how to hone in on the biggest, easiest energy savings first.

3. Targeting the opportunities to save energy

Just finding the opportunities to save energy won’t help you to save energy – you have to take action to target them…

For those energy-saving opportunities that require you to motivate the people in your building, our article on energy awareness should be useful. It can be hard work, but, if you can get the people on your side, you can make some seriously big energy savings without investing anything other than time.

As for those energy-saving opportunities that require you to upgrade equipment or insulation: assuming you’ve identified them, there’s little more to be said. Just keep your fingers crossed that you make your anticipated savings, and be thankful that you don’t work for the sort of organization that won’t invest in anything with a payback period over 6 months.

Photo by Alana Elliott

Insulation – it usually works well, even when it looks like this…

4. Tracking your progress at saving energy

Once you’ve taken action to save energy, it’s important that you find out how effective your actions have been:

• Energy savings that come from behavioural changes (e.g. getting people to switch off their computers before going home) need ongoing attention to ensure that they remain effective and achieve their maximum potential.
• If you’ve invested money into new equipment, you’ll probably want to prove that you’ve achieved the energy savings you predicted.
• If you’ve corrected faulty timers or control-equipment settings, you’ll need to keep checking back to ensure that everything’s still working as it should be. Simple things like a power cut can easily cause timers to revert back to factory settings – if you’re not keeping an eye on your energy-consumption patterns you can easily miss such problems.