Posts Tagged ‘energy bills’
How Long Will Your Building Last?
-How much money should you have saved up for building repairs? -How much life is left in your building under current trends? -Can your building’s life be extended? -Can you upgrade to a Sustainable Green building when it comes time to replace materials and equipment? -Is deferred maintenance going to disrupt your organization’s financial plans? Offering you an un-biased professional report on your building’s future. Contact Us for details.
digitally controlled lighting
What an amazing step forward with lighting! Intelligent lighting that senses occupancy and daylight and varies the lighting output hour by hour automatically. The best part is, it can somehow digitally alter the lighting output of the fixture to keep it from overlighting the space. Oh happy day! For years I have input lighting designs from various electrical engineers into the State's energy forms. It is amazing how often lighting designs flunk the energy code. I am sure many still wind up getting built never-the-less. It is not uncommon to find older buidings with 1-1/2 times to twice as much light as they need. Imagine an office needs 143 watts of light. The electrical designer looks at light fixtures which are available in 120 watt or 200 watt increments, and so the office gets (2) 120 watt fixtures (that's 240 watts in an application that only needs 143 watts). With this new system now, factory-set lights can take these two light fixtures and make sure they don't exceed something in the vicinity of 143 watts. This alone is big news. Now imagine the office has a window. The window provides ample amounts of daylight into the space during typical work hours-say for example 20 ...
wind energy in Florida?
I have been watching the wind here in Lakeland, Florida to see if wind energy might be worthwhile for my green office. Does anyone have experience with wind energy in Florida? I found plans to make a simple wind generator basically using a common fan but only found the local winds spinning the fan blades periodically, and not that fast at that. By increasing the size of the fan blades, it seems that the generator could respond to lighter winds and have more intertia to keep spinning a little longer. But I still have doubts the whole project would be successful. What I noticed was I get a steady balmy breeze with occasional gusts. This is typical for most days of the year. I suspect the trade winds ramming into Florida might have something to do with this. Florida's beaches have an advantage breeze wise, but is that enough? Anyway, I found an intriguing concept on YouTube called "Bendini Motors". Basically, I think this entails modifying a conventional DC motor so that it pulses energy at strategic points when the coils spin around. I watched how a small PC fan would spin for a long time after someone flicked ...
programmable thermostats
[caption id="attachment_31" align="alignright" width="112" caption="Guy Van Meulebrouck"][/caption] I just found a 2010 survey from Lawrence Berkely National Laboratories regarding how programmable thermostats actually wind up being used by occupants. The study reported a survey of 81 residential thermostats and found the following: • 45% were in hold • 30% were programmed • 10% were manual thermostats (not programmable) • 5% were off • 10% operational status was not visible in the picture. The complications involved in each particular thermostat's programming are evident here. I envision a thermostat in the future that uses user friendly computer software and then transfers information to the thermostat via a USB memory stick. The same innovation would be welcome for sprinkler timers too! I used to specify Honeywell T7350's as a general practice. These which are challenging to program correctly due to the immense features. It took me two tries to get my own T7350 programmed right. The local Honeywell representative assured me that he pre-programmed the thermostats himself before he delivered them to jobsites. Great idea. He welcomed me adding information on my drawings as to specific settings that were needed for the building. Guy Van Meulebrouck PEconsulting engineerguy@guyvanmconsulting.com10947 ...
reducing energy bills through long range planning
For commercial buildings, it is not uncommon for some buildings to consume twice as much as other comparable buildings. New buildings, for example, are typically designed to consume about 30% less energy that comparable buildings of old, wether the building owners request it or not. New buildings in the future will be, across the board, even more energy efficient. But what about buildings that are already built? Often times building owners hire their utility provider to produce free energy studies on how to save money on their electric bills. Common results from such efforts are expensive replacements of light fixtures, and in the end, nothing much happens. Large foreign owned energy firms typically produce expensive studies that offer expensive solutions (with attractive paybacks). Expensive and complicated plans often don't always get followed through. This article is about other alternatives to saving on energy bills. For example, a less expensive study which produces a long range plan to replace aging equipment (when it needs replacement) with more cost effective solutions in terms of energy bills. Often, comfort increases in the process. Additionally, there are low cost ways to reduce your ...
Energy Star Ratings
LEEDs has been in the forefront of green building design for years and is skyrocketing in popularity. LEEDs is also complex and sometimes leads to more expensive buildings. Green Globe arose as an alternative to LEEDs. But there are more options... Meanwhile, Energy Star ratings have quietly been gaining popularity on their own. Why? They are simple. One enters their energy bills for the past year or so into a data base of similar buildings. If the building's anual energy bills are a specified percentage less than typical; one qualifies for an Energy Star rating from the U.S Department of Energy/EPA. Once done, the IRS recognizes this award as verification for certain types of tax credits for energy efficiency. Energy Star is far simpler than LEEDs and can be obtained for new construction or for existing buildings that have undergone energy conservation measures. An independent engineer's report is required to make sure the low energy bills are for the right reasons (for example: a half empty building uses less energy but doesn't represent eneryg conservation measures, same goes for sealing off all of the outside air or making the space so dark that people can barely see). Did I mention that the Energy Star plaque looks great ...
Saving on Electric Bills
Cutting out waste on electric bills has a similar impact on a company as earning more business. Although the amounts of energy any given building wastes each month is a limited number, each dollar saved is entirely profit and the savings perpetuate themselves for years. With that in mind, most older buildings are overdesigned lighting wise. It is not uncommon for old-school electrical engineers to design lighting for the worst case. I have seen cases where 5 watts per square foot (or more) were used when 1.5 watt per square foot would have worked. There is a surprising difference between the amount of light an old pair of eyes needs to do detailed accounting paperwork(worst case) compared to the amount of light a young pair of eyes needs to look at a computer screen ( a best case scenario). Did you know too much light can keep you from seeing things clearly? It is a strange concept indoors but a readily observed fact when people drive cars into a setting sun or when hunters and fisherman strain to pick out tiny details. I cut the light almost in half in some offices and found the occupants preferred the lower light level. Many lighting designs ...
