Maximising energy efficiency

Instant savings can be made by making simple adjustments to building controls. But to benefit over the long-term, you need to invest in the right Building Energy Management system.

At the heart of any healthcare facility is the building energy management system (BEMS). It can play an important role in managing energy, and with a major hospital energy bill being typically more than £2 million a year, there is scope to achieve significant savings.
    
How do we reduce the energy consumption of the building and turn a building control system into a building energy management system? There are a number of proven steps, some of them quite basic, which together can add up to some significant savings.

Cost-free ways to save energy
Firstly, zero cost measures should all be things that could be delivered instantly if required:- These include:

• Change temperature set points by one degree without compromising comfort conditions. Resetting building controls typically produces energy savings of 15 per cent
• Check temperature sensor locations – is the measurement relevant to the space? 
• Use time profile settings to check that occupancy times are consistent with actual use of buildings that are intermittently occupied 
• Manage alarms in your BEMS to let you know when things are going wrong on your site. Set the alarms to reflect your key performance indicators (or information you need to know) 
• Record and archive data you need to keep and regularly review this information. Use the data the system provides to investigate worst offending areas. Is the level of energy use justified? You can get the data in text or graphical format from the supervision and management software 
• Devise an energy policy relevant to all staff and communicate it effectively

Spend and save
There are other ways you can save money but often to make the biggest savings you need to invest more money in your BEMS. A site energy audit will nearly always highlight areas for improvement:

• It may be necessary to re-zone some areas to take advantage of solar heating and lighting, as well as adding light level sensors
• A control system does not truly become a BEMS until you link-in metering. A BEMS can easily interface with all types of meters to provide data back to the management and supervision software. You can’t take control of your energy usage until you know where the energy is being used
• Providing different levels of staff with the appropriate information to do their jobs is important. This may be a PC-based management and supervision application at their desk, a display on the control panel door, or a personal digital assistant in their pocket 
• The benefits of adding variable speed drives (VSD) to your systems are widely recognised. Many VSDs are approved under the Carbon Trust enhanced capital allowance scheme (www.carbontrust.co.uk ), which enables UK taxpayers to apply for an allowance to offset some of the capital costs of the equipment
• Having an appropriate support agreement in place, rather than relying purely on maintenance as and when required, adds value to the system and will increase its effectiveness throughout

Other options
In the longer-term, with some more investment, there are other options to explore:

• Interfacing your lighting system with the BEMS can be done at a relatively simplistic level using the BEMS to turn banks of lights on or off based on time control. In many areas, this will allow you to make significant savings
• Interfacing with other items such as room air conditioning units can enable information and adjustments to be made at the BEMS front end.

Once you’ve taken advantage of the more simplistic measures previously mentioned, one of the most effective ways of reducing your energy consumption is to employ the services of the experts.
    
By profiling the expected energy use on your sites, it is possible to monitor when energy usage goes outside of that profile. You can get this sent directly to you via email and converted into pounds and pence. They can also provide you with monthly, quarterly and annual reports highlighting wasteful use of energy, enabling you to investigate a lack of efficiency within your hospital.

Summary

• BEMS have the potential to save a substantial amount of energy
• There are a number of measures that can be taken that do not involve expenditure 
• Correctly supporting your BEMS will ensure it keeps on saving money 
• Further measures should be adopted on a ‘spend to save’ approach 
• There are many other energy-saving initiatives, which range from checking occupancy times to using Bureau services

For more information
Tel: 01403 226451
Web: www.trend-controls.com