Return on Energy Management Investment

Energy Management Metering.

Energy management investment is the application of energy metering your building’s performance and understanding it’s efficiency is critical part of BIM, “Building Information Modelling”;
Given any commercial building, with a lower grade and has a few years of reliable service in its history, there is still good reason to monitor the energy performance of the building. The monitoring and analysis of the data will provide the facility manager with the opportunities for greater efficiencies with operations in the building.

Trend log energy consumption for greater analysis and better decision making.

Shopping Center Example.

To offer an example to explain our point, and your potential opportunity, we have the following:

We were involved with a large shopping center, its energy consumption was costing circa $20,000 a month. The site wasn’t metered except for the Supply Authority metering.

We found the mechanical services had been set to run 24 hours a day when the site was operational for only 12 hours a day. Discovering this issue and then reversing this poor decision to run the mechanical HVAC services 24/7, nearly halved their energy costs. Circa $10,000 a month saved. the Return On Investment for our client based upon our service fee was 30 days.

Had the client had installed an energy meter to serve the Mechanical services and monitored that meter, be that remotely of directly on site, our client would have known, within a week, they were consuming more energy than they should. The cost of installing the meter would have been less than $10,000. The Return On Energy Management Investment is in 30 days.

Benefits of Installing Resource metering.

Fluid Energy Meter:measure the energy lost in delivering services such as chilled water, condenser water and heating hot water

• Opportunity to improve the Nabers assessment results
• By displaying improvements, tenant retention will improve
• The Value of the building has the potential to increase
• Verify where loses are being distributed and perhaps recover some of those costs
• Increase in Nabers rating will offer opportunities to increase rent

Energy meters and water meters in your facility:

Metering adds Visibility, improves Facility resource management.

Installation of additional metering into your facility will increase the Visibility into where resources, including water, are being “digested” by the services.

A Fluid Energy Metering device will deliver energy data consumed by chilled water, Condenser water and Heating Hot water HVAC equipment. Modifications are only required in the pipe work, not the HVAC appliance / equipment.

Consequently Funds, which are being burdened by poor control, can be returned to effective management by understanding where wastage which is occurring in the site.

The NABERS rating process will also recognizes the necessity in reducing the environmental impact of you facility. Improving the metering, improve the understand of where resources are being used. NABERS has various rules in the Management of Metering which will assist to impact your NABERS rating in a positive way:

Trend logging energy performance of appliances and equipment is integral to successful energy management

Smart Metering.

Retail Vendors of electrical energy often benefit from the implementation of “smart meters“, that’s great for them, but how can you benefit?
Reach out to your vendor and many of them will send a excel spread sheet every day, via email, which includes the power factor and the energy consumed from the day before.
To gain the most from energy management investment in your commercial building, then using the data from your energy retailer, compared with the your data from your energy meters, will provide clarity to your building’s performance. Given the energy meters will provide you with independent data, which you have installed are totally separate from the supply authority’s meters, then they will offer the chance to compare and even raise questions about the billing from the retail energy vendor.

Asset Management.

Creating an Asset register, either via a spread sheet or via software still requires on going investment to ensure budgeting is current and accurate.
Metering the resources your building consumes is a critical data component of the Asset register. The information will crystallize any concerns, and verify opportunities for investment.