ENERGY MANAGEMENT

Good Energy Management is Good Business

Energy is one of the most easily controlled costs in your organization. Through energy-efficient measures related to your building, equipment and operational practices, you can often achieve savings of 20 percent or more in existing buildings. New buildings can be designed to be more than 25 percent more efficient than the model code.

There are some great resources on the National Resources Canada Office of Energy Efficiency website.

Energy management should always be at the forefront of the design, operation, and maintenance of a building. BSD can help your company save money by analyzing your facility's infrastructure offering cost effective solutions with realistic payback periods.

Listed below are some common strategies utlized in buildings today.

• Demand Control Ventilation

  ASHRAE Standard 62-99 identifies the outdoor air ventilation required for indoor air quality. Almost all municipal, provincial, state and federal jurisdictions use these guidelines as gospel in their building codes and bylaws. The traditional method of accomplishing the ventilation rates was to set the outdoor air quantity to maximum design occupancy. This can result in a tremendous waste of energy when the occupant load is not at maximum or intermittent use of the space. Carbon dioxide monitoring and control is an acceptable method of reducing ventilation rates when occupancy is below the design load. This ensures ASHRAE standards are being met and only expending the necessary amout of energy.

  

• Economizers

  When the outdoor temperature and humidity are mild, economizers save energy by cooling buildings with outside air instead of by using refrigeration equipment to cool recirculated air. A properly operating economizer can cut energy costs by as much as 10 percent of a building's total energy consumption, depending mostly on local climate and internal cooling loads.

  

  At BSD Solutions Ltd. we can help analyze your buildings HVAC systems for the most cost effective strategy. We consider building energy load, schedules, ventilation demand, control systems then compare the cost to implement the economizer strategy against the energy savings realized.

• Variable Speed Drives

  The best control methods for most systems are Variable Frequency Drives (VFD). This can be simply demonstrated by thinking of driving your car. If you are driving on a highway and entering a populated area, you need to reduce speed so that you don’t risk your own and other peoples’ lives. The best possible way to do this, is of course to reduce motor rotation speed by taking your foot off the gas pedal and, if necessary, change to a lower gear. Another possibility would be to use the same gear, keep your foot on the gas and reduce speed simply by braking. This would not only cause wear on the engine and brakes, but also use a lot of fuel and reduce your overall control of the vehicle.