Building Energy Efficiency: Restaurants Waste Energy In Different Ways
US businesses waste $60 billion yearly on energy, according to a recent report by E Source, which looks at energy data from various industries including retail, healthcare, data centers and manufacturing.
But restaurants, which are among the biggest energy wasters, waste energy differently than those other industries, explains Linda Hardesty of Energy Manager Today.
In most commercial businesses, energy use is attributed to lighting and HVAC use. But almost two-thirds of the energy use in restaurants is related to kitchen activities, according to the article.
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Hurricane Sandy: Tips for Flood Damaged HVAC Equipment
While it’s been months since Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast, and the flood waters have long since receded, people in the affected areas are still dealing with the storm’s devastation.
But building owners still dealing with clean up at their facilities might not realize the importance of properly cleaning flood-damaged HVAC equipment. And they also might not know if they must replace such equipment rather than clean it.
Once HVAC systems are submerged in water, they not only get dirt and debris inside of them, but they’ll also likely become contaminated with bacteria and fungi, warns the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Building Energy Efficiency: ASHRAE’s Economizer Requirements and the Effect on Facilities
Within the year, ASHRAE 90.1 – 2010, the new energy standard for buildings, will become part of commercial building codes in the US. The new standard contains many changes from the 2007 edition that will affect the design, construction and operation of buildings.
One important change is that a cooling system with a cooling capacity of greater than 54,000 Btu/h must have an air economizer or a water economizer.
The only areas exempt from following the economizer requirement are the southernmost tip of Florida and some southern parts of Arizona because the climates in these areas are not favorable for economizing, according to the James M. Pleasants Company (JMPCO), a manufacturer of products and solutions for energy efficient water and steam systems.
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Building Energy Efficiency: Hurdles to Occupant Engagement in Building Performance
Occupant engagement is a priority in building performance.
This fact is evidenced in our post HVAC, Building Energy Efficiency: Sometimes it’s the People. While we now have the technologies to make buildings highly intelligent so we can monitor and therefore reduce energy usage, occupants are still responsible for half of a building’s energy use.
Not only do we need automation systems that facilitate efficiency, we must ensure that occupant behavior aligns with the systems’ performance goals. However, facility managers might not always have an easy time determining how exactly to achieve effective occupant engagement.
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Building Energy Efficiency: Building Performance via Energy Harvesting
If you’re a facility manager who’s concerned about building performance, you would do well to consider energy harvesting.
Early last year, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies listed wireless power (aka energy-harvested power) in its top 10 technologies that would have the “greatest impact on the state of the world in 2012,” according to an article in Facilitiesnet.
Whether that statement is true or not has yet to be shown, but the value of energy harvesting can’t be ignored.
Energy harvesting pulls from available resources. We’ve seen this concept used in past years with windmills, water wheels and other systems.
But what’s new on the forefront is micro-electromechanical technologies, or micro-size energy harvesters, which harvest energy on a smaller scale. In turn the harvested energy is used to power sensors and other devices.
As with other similar energy-harvesting technology systems, the energy is used immediately or stored in batteries or capacitors for when it’s needed. No outside power source is required in this system and energy that would have been wasted is not.
Not easily convinced about the benefits of energy harvesting?
In her article, Energy Harvesting Increasingly Key for Smart Building Rollouts, ZDNet columnist Heather Clancy highlights some of the emerging technologies.
For example, she notes that the company EnOcean, which has been around since 1990, has launched battery-less wireless modules that are powered by heat generated from such things as machinery parts, radiators and the human body.
EnOcean’s co-founder and vice president of product management, Armin Anders, explains where heat is generated and why it’s useful. “You find differences of temperature in diverse environments: in manufacturing, in heated and air-conditioned premises, through solar radiation, on motors and engines and even on human themselves,” he says. “That makes heat an ideal extra energy source for our self-powered wireless modules.”
One drawback, though, might be cost. The wireless sensors can cost more than the sensors with batteries, according to Clancy’s article. But the installation cost may be lower since an electrician doesn’t need to pull wires. In the end, then, the costs of the wireless sensors and the costs of the battery-operated sensors are probably about the same.
Are you convinced this small technology has larger implications that you shouldn’t overlook?
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Supermarkets Sold on Ammonia as a Refrigerant
Richard Heath, a senior manager for the Supervalu/Albertsons line of grocery stores, says his company’s ammonia-based refrigeration system is “operating like a champ.”
The ammonia refrigeration system was one of the first to be installed in the United States. The grocery chain has implemented the technology in one of its stores in Caprinteria, California, Heaths says in an article in Supermarket News. “For anyone who’s concerned about ammonia, many of the hurdles we were afraid of turned out not to be hurdles at all,” he adds.
Ammonia, like other natural refrigerants (propane, carbon dioxide, and other gases), have little or no effect on global warming or the ozone, according to the Supermarket News article. Because of their “gentle touch” on the environment, they are being looked at as replacements for R-22 and HFCs – each known to have a negative impact on the ozone layer and global warming – for use in chiller tubes, air conditioner coils and cooling towers.
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What You Need to Know About Boiler Maintenance Costs and Benefits
An article in Facilities.net highlights the benefits of preventative maintenance programs for boilers. The article explains such programs provide great benefits to building managers by improving safety, minimizing downtime, decreasing replacement costs, and reducing energy and water usage.
But before instituting a plan, a building manager should still take the time to determine if using a program will prove beneficial enough, considering the costs.
Preventative maintenance programs for boilers are most beneficial if the failure rate of the system as well as the cost of the program are less than the cost of repairs or other corrective action, according to the Facilities.net article.
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Risk Management When Using Ammonia as a Refrigerant
Ammonia is looking like one of the more plausible solutions for replacing refrigerants that damage the environment including HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons), as we note in our previous post, Ammonia As A Refrigerant: Pros and Cons – Follow Up.
Our 2009 post, Ammonia As a Refrigerant: Pros and Cons, has become one of our most popular blogs, possibly because of the buzz that’s been generated around using ammonia to replace common refrigerants.
While ammonia has been used less in the past because of health hazards as well as its smell, the newer technologies are making ammonia use safer in chiller tubes, air conditioner coils and cooling towers.
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8 Tips For Effective and Efficient Energy Benchmarking
As we’ve mentioned previously, mandated energy benchmarking is on the rise.
Benchmarking compares one facility’s energy usage to the energy consumption of other facilities to determine if an excessive amount of energy is being used. A benchmarking study sets goals for energy management.
Cities like Philadelphia have recently passed laws mandating energy benchmarking for commercial buildings, and other cities like New York, Austin, Seattle and San Francisco already have benchmarking laws. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency even provides a free energy management tool, the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, to encourage benchmarking.
Facilities with high ratings based on this tool can earn an ENERGY STAR label. But as we’ve also mentioned, energy benchmarking doesn’t come without issues. There are sometimes inconsistencies in data, or inefficiencies in the system.
Here are some tips for a better, more efficient energy benchmarking system, as outlined by Buildings.com and Canada’s Office of Energy Efficiency.
- Get upper management on board. If you have data, but no support, energy benchmarking won’t make a difference. You have to attach a financial analysis to any proposed energy changes. And you must document the impact well so you can convince management a change is necessary.
- Know the facility’s motivation behind energy benchmarking before starting the study. The main motivation is to identify how to save energy, but other motivations can include earning an energy rating, saving money or comparing your building’s performance with the performance of another building.
- Decide if you want to compare the data from year to year for just the building, or if you want to compare it to a peer group of buildings. Differing variables between buildings can make it more challenging to make comparisons, but it’s not impossible if those variables are taken into account.
- Know what data you need to make accurate comparisons, and have that data ready when you start the benchmarking study. Some critical facts include hours of operation, square footage, how the space is used, occupancy numbers, when the building is vacant, the amount of equipment used in the facility and the annual cost data for every fuel source.
- Determine if the information is readily available, or the best way to obtain it.
- Create a plan. Energy benchmarking does nothing but provide data. Conduct an energy audit after the study to determine where the facility is losing energy, and use these results in conjunction with the benchmarking study to create the plan.
- Implement the plan, setting improvement goals with deadlines.
- Continuously monitor, update and analyze the data. Keeping track of the data will also make it easier to have measurements ready for future benchmarking studies.
Utilities sometimes offer self-assessment tools for best practices benchmarking, like this one from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Contact your local utility to find out if it offers a similar program.
Next Steps:
- Subscribe to our blog to receive the full blog series via email and stay informed about the latest HVAC news and insight.
- Stay up to date on facility maintenance tools such as chiller tube cleaners, boiler tube cleaners, hose/pipe cleaners, descaler systems, industrial vacuums, commercial pressure washers, and drain cleaners.
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Green Building and The Built Environment
The push for more green buildings is focused on the use of intelligent controls to monitor and manage lighting, HVAC, security and fire, all with the intent to lower energy costs, according to an article in Forbes.com.
William Pentland, the author of the Forbes article, points to a comment by Richard Gollis of the Concord Group to back up his statement: “Green development no longer simply represents an environmentally friendly label, but instead constitutes a new technology that has the capability to create larger profit margins for real estate.”
Both small and large companies like Johnson Controls, BuildingIQ and JouleX are taking advantage of this push for integrated building management controls as well as introducing new technologies into the market.
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