kWhOURS, Inc. just recently signed onto a push to help create more jobs via industrial energy efficiency.   Existing technology can really drive growth and help create a sustainable economy and world.

Harness the Heat

Traditional Energy Audits have had many quantifiable benefits:

1. Reduced Overhead – Energy costs would typically be reduced by 15% to 20%
2. Increased Profits – Cost reductions went directly to profit margins
3. Highest Returns – Energy efficiency would typically outperform other investments
4. Low Financial Risk – In energy, the higher the return, the lower the risk

Unfortunately, they have also had many faults including:

1. Narrow Scope – The identified savings were frequently only a fraction of what was possible
2. Lost Opportunity – The client was unaware of what wasn’t included.  Missed items would rarely be caught later
3. Narrow Support Base – Because the audits were technical, they were of little interest to others outside of the engineering/maintenance departments in the company and thus gained little support from the company as a whole
4. Low Implementation – Many companies failed to implement recommendations, perhaps due to the narrow support base
5. Low Professional Standards – Many companies providing audits had little real knowledge in the energy efficiency field
6. Impractical Recommendations – Recommendations were frequently impractical due in part to the pre-packaged nature of the product
7. Failed Recommendations – Many technical fixes failed in the real world

…What about the REAL ISSUES?

The reason for both the benefits and failings of energy audits is that energy management has been strongly influenced by technical interests.  While technical elements are important, the focus on technology has tended to minimize or ignore the broader context.  The real issues of energy management are the wider context and ramifications of resource use, operations, environmental performance and company management. These include multiple relationships among buildings, environment, energy systems, people, and the organization.

Addressing these issues will not only dramatically increase energy savings but will provide improvements and savings in related areas that may be greater than the energy bill.   This perspective includes knowledge from design, environment, construction, engineering, business, social issues, and operations.

BENEFITS OF THE REAL ISSUES APPROACH:

Widening the search – Start by seeing energy efficiency as a barometer of operations efficiency. While an energy audit may be about saving money and improving energy efficiency, if that is all it is about, an enormous opportunity is being lost

Understanding people’s role in energy usage – While energy is actually consumed by mechanical and electrical equipment, people, directly and indirectly control what the equipment is, and how, where and when that equipment operates

Widening the context – The building form, materials, organization, orientation and the site it occupies all impact on energy consumption

Widening the perspective on technical issues – For example, understanding that fire safety is the flip side of energy efficiency, both concern heat transfer, fosters the realization that each impacts the other

Widening the support base – Most people have very little interest in technical details.  Thus including other concerns widens the base of people that could become involved and assist with the efforts

At kWhOURS, we focus on the real issues.  That is one of the main reasons we make our software flexible enough to incorporate many of the typical and atypical issues that comes up during an energy audit.

Stay tuned for a series of related posts.  Visit us at www.kwhours.com

-Christopher Haines, VP of Engineering @ kWhOURS, Inc.

Do you ever wonder why so many home and business owners decide to start down the path of ‘going green’ by throwing some solar PV panels on their roofs?  I think in large part, it’s because that they don’t know where else to start.  While we certainly support the development of renewable resources at kWhOURS, solar is not the most cost effective option for reducing utility bills.  The folks we work with – energy auditors – spend their days helping people understand how to make reducing energy consumption into profitable investment opportunities.

We were doing a bit of back-of-the-envelope math at the office the other day that made me step back and think.  Stephen actually mentioned this in his last post.  We figured out how much AC electricity you would produce in Boston, MA with $20,000 worth of solar PV panels, and how many standard lightbulbs you would have to replace to save a comparable amount of energy.  So here goes:

To start, we assumed that a solar array costs $5/Watt to purchase and install, (this is on the lower end of what we have heard of) giving us a 4kW system.  To estimate the output of that brand new solar array, we used National Renewable Energy Lab’s program PVWatts V2 http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/calculators/PVWATTS/version1/US/inputv1_us.cgi?wban=14739.  By their math, our new solar panels would give us about 5,000kWh of AC electricity; about $1,000 worth each year.

Now let’s look at how we can save that same amount of energy and money through energy efficiency.  Replacing a standard 60W incandescent or halogen lamp with a 15W compact fluorescent saves you 45W/hr, and when you use that light about 1,500 hours a year that’s 67.5kWh – about $13.50 in savings per replacement in Massachusetts. It would take replacing 74 incandescent lamps for less than $150 to achieve the same impact as installing $20,000 in solar panels: that’s just 1.5% of the cost! For a home that is probably more lights than are in use on a regular basis, the math is just meant to be illustrative.

A couple other examples of more cost-effective ways to save $1,000 each year in energy:

• Installing a computer power management system (http://www.verdiem.com/resources.aspx): $1,343 (86.6% less than solar)
• Installing low-flow faucets: $3,634 (81.8% less than solar)
• Replacing exit signs lamps with LEDs: $1,671 (91.6% less than solar)
• Installing occupancy sensors in bathrooms and offices: ($5,152, 74.2% less than solar)
• Installing premium efficient motors: ($6,683, 66.6% less than solar)

*most of these examples were extrapolated from this case study performed by the State of Michigan Energy Office (http://www.michigan.gov/documents/CIS_EO_Inside_case24_39158_7.html)

If you’re looking for practical methods of reducing environmental impact at home or work, start with an energy audit.  Auditors are trained to seek out the most cost-effective opportunities to cut energy consumption.  Feel free to ask us for a referral (Contact Us), we’re happy to connect you to a great auditor in your area.