Physical Inspections

Physical Inspections

To show through Physical Inspection that the iSERVcmb approach can correctly identify the level of energy efficiency at which the HVAC systems are performing, the project team inspected 64 of the systems participating in iSERVcmb. The buildings inspected included offices, education facilities, retail and leisure facilities. They were located in the United Kingdom, Greece, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg and Hungary.

Comparing the Inspections undertaken with the predicted benchmark ranges for the same systems from iSERVcmb, showed that both approaches generally agreed on the performance being achieved by most systems, though iSERVcmb also showed many systems had much greater potential savings than the Inspections suggested.

    Main Findings

  • Very few building operators have many details of their HVAC components
  • Very few building operators have maintenance records
  • Southern European States tend to have better maintenance regimes and sizing of components
  • Energy saving initiatives are rarely followed up to verify savings
  • Free cooling/heat recovery was rarely used, even if available as an option
  • Energy Conservation Opportunities noted during inspection are listed for each Inspection undertaken but calculations of specific savings to be made were rarely possible for anything other than the main cooling plant
  • The frequency of occurrence of various ECOs is presented

What iSERVcmb has shown is that regardless of how their impact is perceived, Inspections can still have a role to play in EU legislation if they are valued and undertaken properly – this means being properly funded and allowing time for a full report to be written. iSERVcmb considers that, as a minimum, this role could be to act as a statutory consequential requirement when poor performance is identified by systems opting for the iSERVcmb continuous measurement type approach to compliance. The other important role is as the option for those systems which do not adopt the metering approach.

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