Measuring building energy use: is information the answer?
Energy efficiency has been a big topic this week. On the left coast, the city of Seattle moved closer to requiring that many buildings measure and publicly disclose energy use while on the right coast, New York City passed a package requiring energy audits and tune-ups every 10 years, among other actions.
These steps make sense. But they also seem to bypass a really big
elephant in the room: our own, personal energy use at work.
Think about it. When you are at work, you aren’t paying for energy so it doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal if you leave the computer running all weekend or maybe run a space heater in the dead of winter. You likely work in an efficient building or you work in an energy hog. But either way, it’s the building’s energy use that gets measured when (or if) it applies for Energy Star status. There is no accountability between that number and your use of energy while at work.
Even energy software programs like this one, look at a building as a whole (though its “eggs” can be located on floors).
But a building as a whole is only part of the solution to improving energy efficiency. The other part, which is consistently ignored, is the users.
See, you never really know how a user will treat a building. Even that brilliant LEED platinum project can turn into an energy hog if everyone in it is plugging in multiple devices or using extra electronic equipment. Architects can guess at how a building will be used but that’s all it is: a smart, qualified guess.
To really get efficient buildings, there needs to be a connection between the building itself and the user. How do you make that connection? How do you get people to care about resources they are using when they aren’t paying for it?
One idea: instead of just measuring the entire building’s performance (which, I know is a feat in and of itself), why not also find a way to measure separate sections of a building and give that information to tenants? That way, users can at least begin to make a connection between the very nebulous idea of “building energy use,” and well…. us. The workers. The people using energy. That way, we no longer have the excuse of thinking “this is a LEED certified building, it will be efficient enough for me.” Or “this is an energy hog anyway, it doesn’t matter what I do.”
Heck, if I had a pop-up system on my computer that was half as annoying as my virus detector that told me when I’m using more than my fair share of energy and when I’m being efficient or even gave me that information on a floor by floor basis, I could understand how much I’m using. Maybe it would get people to turn off their computer during the weekend. Or maybe it would remind me to turn off my task light when the sun comes out (because hey, sometimes, I forget).
So, um…. how do we do that?
Locally, Washington Real Estate Holding’s LEED Platinum (for existing buildings) Park Place is at least starting down this very interesting road. I wrote about the building, constructed in 1971, in the DJC here. In the story, I said Park Place has a new online system that lets tenants, staff and eventually the public
Image courtesy Chris J. Roberts Photography
see its operation in real-time, including water capture, reuse, lighting and HVAC loads. The system measures water on a building level but also measures utility use on a floor by floor basis!
Floor by floor measurement still might not seem like it goes far enough, but it sure is a great start to at least seeing how much you - or you and your counterparts - use compared to the rest of a building. Park Place has 10 floors that are occupied by the EPA. Don’t you think actual energy use will affect the actions of people working on those floors?
What do you think about all of this? Are the politicians on the right track by starting with building energy use? Should that information be made public or is it proprietary? Do I have the right idea? Should we - as tenants of a building - see how much energy we are using or is our energy use not worthwhile when compared with building operation as a whole?
Heck, is there a building out there that already sub-meters individual spaces for tenants to this level?
I’d love to hear from you on this topic!
Tags: Energy, New York City, Seattle, Smart Energy
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December 14th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
We are going down this path, but since we’re a fairly small organization on two floors (20-30 people) it is much easier than in a larger building. Our edapt lighting system gives us fixture-by-fixture reports that can be categorized by floor, division, or individual. Each fixture has occupancy, daylight and offers each station a computer desktop control similar to the current volume control. Daily water consumption is down to 6 gallons per person, and of that sub metered to 0.68 gallons of hot water per weekday.
Using a TED 5000, we also have an intranet webpage that displays current building consumption and that can be broken down by current and historical electrical consumption of the HVAC, workstations, and server/misc levels. I can also track this data via Google PowerMeter offsite. The only energy source we don’t have metered is the backup propane for the furnaces, but that is minimally used - only a couple dozen gallons per month in the winter.
While this would be more difficult and complicated to upscale to a larger building, it serves as a pretty good example as to what can be done affordably on a modern office, with mostly off-the-shelf products.
An instant notification for an individual user would be nice, this amount of info is easy for a building manager to give monthly (or weekly) notifications of trends seen across the building and it’s users. I know I’ve sent a few emails out to folks to remind them to shut off their workstations at night, because I’ve seen off numbers during after-hours operations, via Google.
With all this energy tracking in place, privacy/surveillance also becomes somewhat of an issue, because now the sensors around you (like in the lights above you) are now tracking how often you’re at your workstation, how long your breaks are, when you arrive/leave, etc. Just like with any other advancement in tech, it’s a matter of use and disclosure by the employer.
December 14th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
UW has been struggling with this for quite a while. In some cases such as the libraries, the person sitting at the desk isn’t even predictable!
The good news is that through years of Energy Star refinements computers are using a lot less power that they used to. The bad news is that other equipment such as cell phone chargers are horrific. There is also an organizational challenge since electricity has traditionally been included as a flat fee in overhead rates, so heavy electricity users (say, a department with electron microscopes or a big server room) have a disincentive.
Here’s a recent presentation on UW’s Green Initiatives:
http://www.washington.edu/lst/news/2009/student-technology-fair
December 14th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Some thoughts.
A. Paragraph 9, instead of “fare share”, it should be “fair share”.
B. Office equipment contributes only to 17% of total cooling load in a typical commercial building, and obviously no heating load: http://buildingsdatabook.eren.doe.gov/TableView.aspx?table=3.1.12
C. Electronics and equipment in a commercial building contribute about 11% of the total energy use, as opposed to lighting (25%) and heating/cooling combined load (25%): http://buildingsdatabook.eren.doe.gov/TableView.aspx?table=3.1.4
I guess the key is, because lighting and HVAC contribute half of the energy use in a building, these items tend to be the primary targets. And, since the computer equipment category has long been targeted by Energy Star, a lot of efficiency has been built into them, such that they (in a idle/sleep mode) consume less energy than a CFL turned on; even less if in hibernate mode.
D. LEED EB+C O&M EA Credit 1 allows for auditing of entire building energy use, to achieve scaled credits between 1 and 18 for appropriate use reductions. So, in a way, we’re already headed down that road towards whole building use, real-time display/analysis.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:04 am
I certainly agree that just ’seeing’ how much energy they are using is often enough to make people be more careful about their consumption and thus reduce their CO2 emissions.
Earlier this year the Government revealed its plans for every home in the UK to have a Smart Meter by the end of 2020. It will enable suppliers to remotely record customers’ gas and electricity use, doing away with meter readings, while householders will be able to keep an eye on how much energy they are consuming.
Homeowners who have had SolarUK solar thermal systems installed have reported electricity savings as a result of getting electricity monitors at the same time, which helps make them realise that they sometimes use energy unnecessarily.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
[...] DJC Green Building Blog » Blog Archive » Measuring building energy use: is information the answer? http://www.djc.com/blogs/BuildingGreen/?p=1589 – view page – cached Energy efficiency has been a big topic this week. On the left coast, the city of Seattle moved closer to requiring that many buildings measure and publicly disclose energy use while on the right… Read moreEnergy efficiency has been a big topic this week. On the left coast, the city of Seattle moved closer to requiring that many buildings measure and publicly disclose energy use while on the right coast, New York City passed a package requiring energy audits and tune-ups every 10 years, among other actions. View page [...]
January 29th, 2010 at 7:11 am
We’re a commercial boiler service company in New York and we see commercial buildings wasting energy all the time. For example, look at something as “unsexy” as the heating plant. Here you have a major capital item burning thousands (gallons/dollars, you name it) per day. With the price of oil fluctuating and the cold weather upon us for another month or two, it’s a no-brainer to keep the building heating plant functioning at peak efficiency.