Benchmarking

You can't manage what you can't measure. Benchmarking tells you where your building stands in relation to other buildings of the same size, type, and use in the same climate zone. It can also be used to compare your current condition to its future improved state.

Utility Bill Analysis

A more thorough Utility Bill Analysis can indicate patterns, trends or abnormalities in your energy use. Typically a Utility Bill Analysis is based on at least two years of electric and gas bills, along with information about building use patterns and major changes in equipment.

Commercial Condition Survey

The next step in getting a handle on your building's energy costs is an actual physical survey of your building, a Condition Survey. The Energy Detectives examine your HVAC equipment, including boilers, furnaces, chillers, condensers, roof top units, air handlers, motors, dampers, distribution systems and controls. Our objective is to uncover the sources of energy waste and identify opportunities to save energy and money. A condition survey also includes an assessment of the building envelope and lighting.

When building owners are confronted with the decision to repair aging equipment or replace it, initial cost is often their primary consideration. This is false economy. The cost of energy used by heating and cooling equipment is many times greater than the initial costs of the equipment itself. Durability, reduced operating expenses, and life cycle costs should be the most important factors in your decisions. We can provide the economic analysis that underlies your best choices. The example below is an excerpt from a Repair or Replace Analysis conducted for a condo association.

Lighting Retrofits

Upgrading lighting is very common and one of the most cost-effective options for improving building energy use. Our lighting surveys help determine which lighting improvements are optimal for your building and its occupants. In addition to reducing energy costs, improved lighting is superior in every respect: longer lamp life, better color rendition, reduced air conditioning loads, less glare. Clients have also reported a positive impact on the workplace environment and productivity.

Control Strategies and the Human Interface with the Building

While changes in the HVAC and lighting control systems can have a big impact on operating costs, so can the decisions made by humans who operate these systems and the building itself. Here's a short list of some of the most egregious oversights we have witnessed:

• Lights left on in unoccupied spaces
• Heating and cooling operating at the same time in the same space
• Outside ventilation air being brought into the building when unoccupied
• Heating and cooling being delivered to spaces that have been unoccupied for years
• A large high voltage transformer in constant use to supply a single-computer work station
• Big holes in the building where equipment once was
• Loss of automated control without the operator realizing it for years

Control systems can be operating as designed but still be sorely outdated. Our surveys can result in recommendations for improving controls and control strategies based on the best practices currently available.

Boiler Assessment for 12 Unit Condo Building

The boiler is original equipment installed with the building in 1915. According to the information you provided, your natural gas bills have been running around $2,200 a month during the heating season.

On your first question about the condition and serviceability of your present boiler, we have some good news and some bad news. First the good news, your boiler is a Kewanee that has proven to be one of the most durable of the World War I era coal burning boilers. It has already lasted thirty-two years longer than its expected service life of 60 years. The boiler has had maintenance and could conceivably be upgraded and kept in operation for several more years.

Now for the bad news: at what cost do you want to keep this boiler in service? All boilers consume many times their initial purchase price in fuel over their service life. The aging takes its toll on efficiency of a boiler that has seen 90 years of service. The efficiency was also decreased when the combustion chamber designed to extract heat from coal (a slow burning fuel) was fitted with a natural gas burner. Now, the boiler is probably operating at a steady state efficiency of about 50%.

There is a direct relationship between the operating efficiency of your system and the dollar amount that you pay to heat your building. For example, if the price of natural gas is $1.00 per therm, your heating requirement 1.8 million BTUs per hour, and your boiler operating at 50% efficiency, you would pay $36.00 per hour. A modern boiler easily operating at 80% efficiency would cost you only $22.50 for the same amount of heat.

Plus, modern boilers and burners can modulate or adjust their output to conform at any given time more closely to the actual heating load (how much heat is required for comfort and safety). So instead of firing at a constant rate, modern burners can fire at a variety of levels as conditions change.