Every building and business should have an ‘Energy Champion". If you're serious about reducing your carbon footprint and at the same time reducing bottom line operating costs.
Q:What is the cheapest, cleanest energy?
A: It's the energy you don't use
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to become an energy Champion, you need to know what uses electricity in your business and understand the basics about electricity to reduce consumption and to manage the daily energy demand of your business. A common sense approach is always a good start.
An Energy Champion will be more effective for the implementation and continuous long term energy reducing strategies of your business. The objective for your Energy Champion is not to "know it all" but to understand the core information requirements. As an example if an external company is engaged to provide a detailed energy audit then the Energy Champion needs to understand what to expect and can confidently and efficiently implement the strategies, without paying excessive costs to the external providers.
If I put this to you as a scenario : You have just completed your Level 1-2 base audit and you have identified that 60% of the buildings electricity consumption is on air-conditioning and 10% is on lighting. What are you going to address first? The lighting or the air-conditioning?. Well I would hope you would say the Air-Conditioning, if you could get 15% more efficiency out of your air-conditioning your return would be far greater than getting a 50% efficiency on your lighting. This doesn't mean you don't look at your lighting, you priortise where the best return on investment will be. You may be thinking air-conditioning, this will cost a fortune, well it can be as simple as things like cleaning the Filters and having it serviced regularly that create efficiencies.
An Energy Champion needs to gain knowledge in the principals of energy auditing or at least understand what is involved in an energy audit and what consumes the electricity within the business. The basic principles that will need to be understood on the journey to becoming an Energy Champion are as follows:
- Understanding Australian Standard ISO 19011 Auditing requirements
- Definitions of key technical terms
- Audit limitations
- Metering types, reading methods and accreditation
- Categorising of energy consuming devices
- Understanding and undertaking review of asset list
- Understanding energy saving devices
- Effect of human habitation
- Understanding of basic building design and layout
- Effective writing of summary and report
Aligning expectation with the achievable results inside any organisation is very important. In order to obtain the budget requirements to undertake the audit one should review the basis of the 3 levels of audits. Undertaking the correct level of audit for your organisation and aligning and prioritizing issues related to your operations are the keys to a successful implementation program.
According to the Australian Standard ISO 19011 Energy Audits are defined in 3 levels as part of an energy audit process.
- Level 1 (considered overview). Purpose is to investigate the possibility of energy savings to be made. Involves a desk top investigation with no site visit.
- Level 2 Identifies energy savings available to a site. Purpose is to show where savings are to be made. Accuracy +/- 20%
- Level 3 Identifies energy savings to a site, all or in part. Purpose is to show in detail where savings are to be made. Recommended to engage a specialist to perform parts of the audit, to an accuracy of +/- 10 %
The Energy Champion should identify the list of potential outcomes required of the organisation and prioritise:
- Cost reductions.
- Systems improvement.
- Improved comforts.
- Reduced waste.
Finally, some additional points that an energy champion should consider are:
- Over what time period will your first energy audit take?
- When does one need to call on technicians and engineers with specific expertise?
- What will be undertaken on completion of the audit?
Educating yourself and your business is a good start to becoming energy efficient, saving money and the planet.
Written By Michael Newton and Dr Keith Watts of Watt Utilities
