Energy Conservation Opportunities

Energy Conservation Opportunities

One of the iSERVcmb project aims was to establish where energy and cost savings possible from the iSERVcmb approach were most likely to occur. The project has produced an Energy Conservation Opportunity (ECOs) identification methodology based on measured and modelled data for Buildings, HVAC Systems and HVAC Components, which identifies ECOs specific to buildings, systems and components.

There have been two specific work strands in the project looking at identifying ECOs from the building description and the metered data respectively. The algorithms and models for these ECOs are incorporated into the HERO reporting system to enable estimates of savings to be obtained and reported. The more meter and sensor data for a building being held in the iSERVcmb database the more ECOs will be activated.

    For the ECO’s from measured data:

  • Most frequent ECO’s identified from analysing the measured data are night time ventilation; change filters; switch off pumps when not required
  • ECO’s can be used to automatically interpret measured data and identify savings
  • Savings from ECO’s identified from the data in HERO range from 2 – 40% in nearly all systems on HERO, with a mean predicted saving of 15%

    For the modelled ECO’s:

  • Replacing lighting equipment by low consumption type has the largest predicted impact on electricity savings at the building level
  • Reducing solar gains (e.g. window film or tinted glass) has the highest predicted potential for electricity savings at HVAC system level
  • Lack of available data, especially nominal power rating of components, limits the occurrence of some ECOs calculations

    Conclusions:

  • The predicted savings potential across all the systems, based on the iSERVcmb database benchmarks, and the predicted savings from the measured and modelled ECO’s approaches broadly agree with each other. This suggests that using the iSERVcmb approach can identify energy savings potentials properly, and that the ECOs can help more accurately pinpoint where to make some of these savings.

The ECO reports are grouped together in a configured report which is produced automatically and emailed out to the end users. A sample ECO report within a building is shown below.

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