HVAC, Building Energy Efficiency: Sometimes it’s the People
We’ve previously talked about building performance in other blog posts, discussing such concepts as smart buildings, data loggers and energy benchmarking.
But it’s also important to spend some time focusing on occupant engagement.
The reason: “[E]ven in the most advanced, forward thought, state-of-the-art green building initiatives, occupants account for up to 50 percent of consumption rates,” according to an article in EDC Magazine.
Despite our highly intelligent building automation systems and all the other innovations, occupants still control half of a building’s energy usage. So the goal is not only building these sophisticated systems, but engaging occupants so they change their behaviors to align with the systems’ performance goals.
YR&G Sustainability’s Principal, Josh Radoff, says it’s critical to lay a groundwork of transparency. He says occupants must understand performance goals and their importance or they won’t be invested in meeting these goals.
Paula Melton tells an interesting story in Environmental Building News.
It seems small indicator lights are used above windows in a LEED Platinum test-bed facility that’s owned by the Syracuse Center of Excellence – small green and red lights far above eye level.
The lights are part of a building maintenance system that provides the information needed to maximize energy efficiencies and optimize indoor air quality to let building occupants know when outside conditions are favorable for natural ventilation, controlling the amount of artificial lighting, and managing the blind controls to reduce glare and heat.
The green lights glow on warm days – days when opening a window or two would increase the comfort level in the facility.
But when the sun goes down and the temperature drops, the red lights burn brightly, indicating that opening the windows really isn’t a good idea.
The red and green lights alert the occupants when it’s best to open windows based on measurements of outdoor temperature, humidity, air quality, and wind speeds.
Like everyone else, though, when building scientists get hot, they open windows. And they keep them open to let in the cool evening air.
The problem is that most of the people in the building – researchers conducting energy and indoor environmental quality experiments – either don’t notice the lights turning red or they don’t understand why they keep changing.
And they don’t understand that if they open windows when the lights turn red, the HVAC system automatically shuts down.
But this story has a happy ending, the author notes.
The building manager and information coordinator, Tim Benson, tells the building’s occupants what the lights are and why they’re important for meeting the building’s performance goals. Now, the occupants understand that when the red lights glow, they aren’t to open the windows.
This case demonstrates the importance of occupant engagement.
“The lights didn’t serve their original purpose until building occupants learned how to interpret and respond to them – that is, until occupants were engaged,” Melton says.
Radoff gives us more insight into the subject of occupant engagement in the white paper, Engaging Building Occupants to Improve Sustainability Performance.
Radoff contends that intentions don’t always equate to results.
If a building owner invests in an energy-efficient, LEED-certified building, he most likely expects the building to use a certain amount of energy.
However, the actual performance data might not live up to the building owner’s expectations, especially once there are people living or working in the building.
Occupant behavior has a greater effect on the building’s performance than people might think. A building performance program is only effective if it’s used properly and takes the building’s occupants into consideration.
In an upcoming post, we’ll tell you more about how to overcome the hurdles to successful occupant engagement.
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Post-Hurricane Sandy Series: Mold and Mildew Management
This week we continue our Post-Hurricane Sandy Series with what you need to know about mold and mildew management after the flood waters recede.
Our next posts in the series address cooling towers and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) assistance.
As we’ve discussed in our post Post-Hurricane Sandy Series: Mold Control for HVAC and Facilities, controlling mold growth must be placed at the top of a clean-up list after a flood. Growth can occur on any number of hard surfaces, such as flooring and drywall, and also within the confines of your HVAC.
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Post-Hurricane Sandy Series: Mold Control for HVAC and Facilities
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Goodway is a resource for those of you affected by flooding, offering you some of the best advice and products to get your facility back in operation.
This blog starts our series on post-Hurricane Sandy information. We’ll address mold and mildew management after flood waters recede, clearing flood water, surface cleaning and mold management, cooling towers and FEMA assistance.
In this first post, we’ll start by telling you some things you should know about mold control for HVAC and facilities.
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The Role of Social Media in Facility Management
Social media is no longer just for communication between friends and family members. Today, businesses and other organizations are using social media to communicate with customers and employees, according to an article in Today’s Facility Manager.
Sometimes facility managers are responsible for communicating with thousands of people, as well as with their fragmented workforces (e.g., employees on the road, working from home or in multiple offices), so effective and immediate communication becomes even more difficult.
That’s why more and more facility managers are turning to social media as a platform for communications, according to Today’s Facility Manager. Managers can tweet about facility updates, or even create Facebook pages to keep employees and customers updated.
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More Building Owners Focusing on Energy Management
Eighty-five percent of building owners are using energy management to increase the efficiency of their operations, according to a global survey released in July by Johnson Controls. That’s an increase of 34 points over the last two years.
Additionally, 46% of those in the United States and Canada say they plan to focus more spending on energy efficiency within the next year, according to the survey, which queried 3,500 building owners and operators about their future energy plans.
Financial incentives appear to drive companies toward implementation, with one-third of respondents explaining that energy efficiency changes are fueled by the involvement of rebates, tax credits and other incentives. Johnson Controls has released a free report to address the need to increase energy efficiency in commercial buildings. Driving Transformation to Energy Efficient Buildings: Policies and Action includes a full report and a building efficiency policy assessment tool.
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Goodway Presents: Innovation Poised To Positively Impact Our Industry
Once again, Goodway and Just Venting are pleased to present information which will help to educate and inform our valued readers. According to the consulting firm Pike Research, in the next 5 years, the HVAC industry will see a significant and continuing emphasis on energy management. As noted in an executive summary of the report, rising energy prices and increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are driving many building owners to manage energy as an asset rather than treating it as a fixed cost.
According to Pike, until recently, the largest single energy cost in most buildings had been lighting. But a concerted focus on reducing lighting costs, coupled with technological innovations, has driven down lighting costs to the point where HVAC has replaced it as the largest building management cost item.
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Maintenance Is Critical To Maintain Chiller Performance and Efficiency
A properly planned and executed maintenance program is critical to both extend the life of your investment in your chillers and operate them at peak efficiency. Critical aspects include reducing fouling and scale, inspecting refrigerants and keeping a daily log.
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Here’s An Energy Saving Tip For You: Variable Speed
Here’s an energy-saving tip for you. Remember the movie “The Graduate”, where the guy pulls Dustin Hoffman aside at a party and says “I have one word for you – plastics”? Well, we have an energy saving tip like that for you that consists of two words: “variable speed”.
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Key to a Good Building Management System: A Central Focus on HVAC
Gus Ezcurra, CEO of Advanced Telemetry
By this time it doesn’t even need pointing out that building management systems (BMS), also known as energy management systems (EMS), have become an integral part of large building operations all across the U.S. and around the rest of the world. But maybe it does need pointing out that the best building/energy management systems share a number of key qualities, and that one of them is this, which we feel we can’t trumpet too loudly: they focus specifically on the HVAC system.
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