Archive for the ‘Energy Efficiency’ Category
According to a recent report from the Australian Energy Market Commission, residential electricity prices are forecast to go up 37% over the next three years.
The forecast increases are broken down as follows:
- Transmission: 6% contribution
- Distribution: 34% contribution
- Wholesale: 40% contribution (includes impact of carbon price)
- Retail: 12% contribution
- Renewables (RET): 3% contribution (from renewable energy target)
- Renewables (FIT): 2% contribution (from feed in tariffs)
Last week we started the Perth Solar City Bring It Down Challenge, where seven schools are being challenged to bring down their energy use over seven weeks.
Round one of the competition is over and we’re incredibly pleased that every school has managed to reduce their energy use. Mundaring Christian College and Hillside Christian College are neck and neck at the moment, with Mundaring just pipping Hillside in Round 1 with an awesome 50% reduction in their energy use.
Ballajura Community College is the largest school in the competition, with a huge student population and a baseline energy use of over 24,000kWh per week, which is equivalent to about 220 average homes. While they only scored 10 points this round, I think the 6% reduction, equivalent to over 1,500kWh, is fantastic. To put 1,500kWh in perspective, its equivalent to the energy that Ballajura might get if they installed a 55kW PV array.
If you’d like to check out the complete results from round one, you can download the Western Power Bring It Down Challenge Round 1 Results (PDF).
Every school dashboard can be viewed from the Bring It Down page on the Perth Solar City web site, or you can click on the schools below to see how they are going:
Upper Swan Primary School
Ballajura Community College
Woodbridge Primary School
Mundaring Christian College
Hillside Christian College
Swan View Senior High School
Weld Square Primary School
As part of the Clean Energy Future policy announcement, the Government unveiled plans for a new National Energy Saving Initiative. This kind of scheme is already in place in NSW, Victoria, and South Australia.
The main mechanism driving the Energy Saving Initiative will be similar to that driving Australia’s renewable energy target (20% renewable energy by 2020).
The large-scale renewable energy target (LRET) and small-scale renewable energy scheme (SRES) both place a legal obligation on energy retailers to obtain and surrender a rising number of certificates each year which represent a unit of renewable energy generation. Renewable energy project developers obtain these certificates from the government. The trade in these certificates creates a financial incentive for further investment in renewable energy.
In the case of the Energy Saving Initiative a similar legal obligation will be placed on energy retailers to obtain and surrender certificates which represent a unit of avoided energy consumption. Again, there is likely to be some kind of rising target, which for a retailer will represent an increasing proportion of the electricity they send out each year. For example, in year 1 of the scheme, retailers may be required to obtain certificates equivalent to 1% of the electricity they send out.
As with LRET and SRES, the supply of certificates will come from energy savings projects. For different kinds of energy savings projects there will be different recognised calculation methods, and accredited project participants will by able to apply these methods to obtain certificates from the government.
The next step in the implementation of the Energy Saving Initiative will be a consultation process. You can register to receive more information about the initiative by emailing energyefficiency@climatechange.gov.au.
Yesterday the Government finally released their plan to price carbon through their Clean Energy Future package. This package will see the Government tackle climate change by:
- pricing carbon
- encouraging renewable energy
- encouraging energy efficiency and;
- increasing the amount of carbon stored in the land (through the Carbon Farming Initiative)
Perhaps the most talked about and anticipated announcement was the detail supporting the price on carbon. From July 1, 2012 this new package will see about 500 of Australia’s top polluters pay a fixed price of $23 per tonne of CO2e emitted. This price will rise by 2.5% per annum for three years before becoming a market-driven Emissions Trading Scheme, with linkages to international markets.
For now, the Carbon Price will apply to stationary energy, industrial processes, fugitive emissions and non-legacy waste. Significant compensation has been announced for both households (approximately $4 billion per annum) and industry (approximately $3 billion per annum).
In addition to the carbon price, there is a strong focus on delivering cleaner energy through investment in new technologies and the closure of highly emissions intensive energy generation as well as further investment in renewable energy technologies.
It is expected that this package will deliver on Australia’s commitment to reduce pollution by 5% on 2000 levels by 2020, and 80% by 2050.
This new, long-term, trajectory is one of the most significant aspects of the package, representing a 2% decrease in emissions from today’s levels, while supporting a projected increase in the Australian population of over 13 million.
So what to make of the package?
There are a number of pros and cons of this package, which we will continue to see debated in the public domain in the coming months before it goes to Parliament in November. Whilst no-one would argue this current package is perfect, given the unsuccessful history we have of trying to address climate change (whether it be through an emissions trading scheme, a carbon tax, energy efficiencies or direct action) I think this package represents a compromise that will not only show the world that Australia is willing to do their bit to address climate change, but hopefully will also provide the momentum needed to shift Australia to a low emissions future.
For businesses, the package will mean something different for everyone. To understand its impact and prepare for a July 1 2012 start, businesses who believe they will be impacted should give careful consideration to the package with regards to their own operating environment. Unless you are directly liable, your main focus should be on energy use in your business.
With a planned start less than 12 months away it won’t be too soon to start such a review immediately. If needed, Greensense is able to assist with such a review and to develop any strategies to address any anticipated risks or cost increases.
The government announced its Low Carbon Communities program late last year. If you are a local council or you operate a community facility, it might be time to start thinking about potential projects that you could seek funding for under the program.
The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency is currently in the process of developing the program guidelines, including determining how the learnings from funded projects and information about the benefits of energy efficiency can be shared. They will be consulting on the draft program guidelines in early 2011. We’d expect applications for funding to open before the end of this financial year.
You should probably start by dusting off your greenhouse gas reduction plans, energy efficiency strategies, and climate change adaptation plans to look for potential projects. As a reminder there will be three funding streams:
- Small scale grants of up to $500,000 for local councils to undertake smaller scale projects to reduce energy consumption in facilities such as outdoor lighting.
- Large scale grants of up to $5 million for operators of community facilities to invest in energy efficient upgrades such as the installation of cogeneration or new heating and air conditioning.
- Greener Suburbs grants of up to $500,000 for councils to implement capacity building and demonstration projects that improve the use of parks and green spaces in urban areas.
Grants will be competitive so it is worthwhile being prepared. By considering project opportunities in the context of your broader strategies you can maximise the benefits of any funding you obtain.
There are three ways Greensense can potentially help.
Firstly, we are preferred suppliers of climate change consulting services to WA local governments and have worked with many councils developing adaptation and abatement plans. If you would like to think strategically about building a Low Carbon Community we would love to help.
Secondly, if you have some projects in mind, we can help to develop implementation plans and business cases for these projects. Once the program guidelines are available, we can help you to prepare effective grant applications.
Lastly, our technology, Greensense View supports energy efficiency and is already implemented in many councils and community buildings including leisure centres, sports stadiums, libraries and community centres. As an eligible energy efficiency technology, you could apply for funding to implement Greensense View.
Alternatively, you might want to consider installing Greensense View ahead of your Low Carbon Communities grant application, particularly if you are interested in the large scale grants. Greensense View is very cost effective to deploy and the real-time profile information it provides would be invaluable in supporting a grant application for a more substantial upgrade of a building.
In any case, its time to start put your thinking caps on to think about how this new government policy can support the changes you want to make in your community.
The Environmental Institute of Australia and New Zealand (EIANZ) are running a climate change leadership forum on November 23rd, on tools, techniques and leadership lessons on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Greensense Managing Director, Derek Gerrard, will be presenting on smart technologies and behavioural change, reviewing the Subiaco Oval case study, as well as our carbon emission’s reporting solution for Local Government in partnership with WALGA.
If you haven’t registered and would like to you can find out more information here.
Click to watch the interview
A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned our energy saving project at Pattersons Oval. Since then Derek, our MD, and Geoff Glass, the Director of Facilities at WA Football Commission were interviewed about the project by The West.
You can click on the photo to the right and hear about how the increasing cost of electricity in Western Australia means that systems like Greensense View make great economic sense. If you’d like any more information about the project, feel free to contact us or e-mail Derek directly.
Today the Federal Government announced $80 million dollars to help local councils and communities to make energy efficient upgrades to street lighting, community facilities, and council buildings. Details of the new scheme can be found in the Fact Sheet (PDF).
Successful applicants will need to report on the energy they have saved, and use their experience and project plans to help similar facilities undertaking these upgrades in the future. Greensense View ® is already used by eight local government authorities to monitor energy and water use in community buildings in real-time. Greensense View can also be used to monitor streetlights. It provides a great way to help target energy efficient upgrades for maximum impact, and to engage stakeholders and tell the story about the improvements that are being made
In a first for stadiums Australia-wide, the West Australian Football Commission has recently installed our real-time energy monitoring platform, Greensense View, to measure and reduce the ground’s energy consumption.
As venue managers, the WAFC implemented this system to identify ways of increasing energy efficiency, reducing environmental impacts and saving costs. The operational savings gained from more responsibly managing Western Australia’s premier sporting facility can then be reinvested into new initiatives and programmes.
Geoff Glass, the WAFC’s Director of Facilities and Planning is encouraged by the project and the opportunities it presents.
“The Greensense project at Patersons Stadium has allowed us as venue managers, to better understand our energy usage and will provide staff with real time feedback on energy consumption. It will also stimulate ideas and ways for all venue occupiers to explore further savings in energy usage and greenhouse emissions,” says Geoff.
The ongoing project will go a long way toward Patersons Stadium achieving maximum returns both economically and environmentally, by first building an informed and effective management. At a time of change for the Stadium, these greener changes are not only ground-breaking for our State’s home of football, but will also inspire and show the way for other AFL and sporting venues Australia-wide.
Everyone knows efficiency is a good thing, right? By being more efficient we can get the same outcome with less resources: the same illumination in our homes with less energy, the same production of widgets in our factory with less waste, the same recreation spaces with less water.
Stanley Jevons isn’t so sure. He was a British economist who in 1865 pointed to the experience of the Scottish iron industry who had significantly improved their efficiency, in terms of coal per tonne, but at the same time actually increased their consumption of coal. This phenomenon has come to be known as Jevons paradox.
Earlier this year, a scientific article by Jeff Tsao looked at the effects of more efficient lighting technology over the last 300 years. He found that introduction of more efficient lighting had actually increased the energy consumption associated with lighting. Exactly as Jevons would have predicted.
As we are able to produce more light with less energy and less cost, we take the opportunity to increase the amount of light we generate. More efficient lighting has enabled us to literally ‘light up the night’ and provided us much more amenity and enabled 24 hour lifestyles. The conclusion of Tsao’s paper is that we should expect the transition to LED lighting to increase, rather than decrease, energy consumption.
You shouldn’t draw the conclusion that efficiency improvements are bad. Producing more with less is what has enabled economic growth, and what is helping to lift millions out of poverty. But, when one of our goals is to improve sustainability and reduce resource use, we can’t expect an efficiency improvement alone to achieve that end.
What else do you need to do? How can you beat Jevons paradox?
The answer is to restrict the use of the resource, while the efficiency improvement allows you to still achieve the output you need. This restriction might be in the form of a cap, like the cap on greenhouse gas emissions in an emissions trading scheme. It might be a price increase that acts as a countervailing force to the efficiency improvement. Or, it might be a monitoring and reporting/disclosure scheme like NABERS.
In practical terms, this means that when you are making investments in improving efficiency, you should also give thought to how you will monitor and restrict resource use. Our real-time resource monitoring solution, Greensense View, might be part of the solution. Feel free to contact us and find out how.
Whilst most businesses and employees here in WA will have been enjoying last Monday off for the Queens Birthday public holiday, for many of our commercial buildings it was business as usual. The building management system (BMS) that manages the air conditioning, turns on the lights or powers up the lifts, is often blissfully unaware that its a public holiday and the building is actually empty. Significant energy (and dollars) are wasted as a result.
I took a moment to look over some data from one or two of the Greensense View® dashboards of our clients, and sure enough it didn’t take long to find an example of a BMS hard at work when it should be taking the day off. The image below shows the energy profile for one of our clients for the current week. Remember that Monday 27 was a public holiday.
The facility in question is a fairly typical office building. In this chart, we are separating out electricity used by the air conditioning system (the green data series) from general power used by office lighting, pcs and so on. You can clearly see that on Monday the air con fired up a little after 7am, just as it normally would, and ran through until the end of the business day, even though the office was empty. When you consider there are around 10 public holidays in WA each year, the wasted energy for this building alone would total more than $1000 a year.
So whilst a correctly configured and maintained BMS can be vital in helping to run a building efficiently, an incorrectly configured system can be worse than none at all. Naturally, when a building is being run for us by a computer, we often stop questioning what exactly is going on and simply trust that the computer is doing the right thing. This example highlights that this is not always the case and there are often good opportunities available to reduce energy waste simply by ensuring the computers we use to run our buildings are doing the right thing.
Many people install solar PV systems at their home or work, but do not have an easy way to monitor its performance. Most solar inverters only have a very small display and these are often very difficult to use and identifying short term or long term trends is extremely difficult.
Our Greensense View® dashboard can be used to monitor green power solar generation by displaying power being generated in real-time, as well as long term trends, on simple, easy-to-understand charts. This is of immense value for engaging with people on many different levels, but better still is that behind the scenes we collect additional technical information that can be used to manage the performance of a solar installation and diagnose issues.
One of our customers has a 30kW solar PV system. They are using Greensense View® to monitor on-site energy generation and consumption of electricity from the grid. Their dashboard was clearly showing that the solar panels were not performing as expected, and were not producing electricity on some fine, sunny days when you’d normally expect energy production to be at its highest.
The chart below shows two consecutive sunny days. The first day shows a normal profile. The energy produced is a nice curve peaking in the middle of the day. On the next day, just before 9am the system stops producing energy, and stays off until almost 3pm, missing the best part of the day.
In fact we can quantify this loss exactly. On the first day, 160.5 kWh of energy were produced, and on the second day only 37.5 kWh were produced. On the second day additional electricity had to be purchased from the grid to make up the shortfall from the on-site generation. The additional cost for that one day of lost generation was approximately $42, based on Synergy R3 Tariff peak-time. If you extrapolate this out over a year, this behaviour could have a direct cost of over $15,000, dramatically increasing the payback time for the solar panels.
So you can see that it is important to measure and monitor these systems to ensure the return on investment is achieved as expected and that corporate emissions reductions expected from the installation of this equipment are actually being met.
We narrowed down the problem for them by analysing the data we had been collecting. The issue in this case was a voltage cut-out. To be connected to the grid, the grid owner, in this case Western Power, needs to approve the inverter and there are obviously criteria that need to be met in this process. One of these criteria is cut-out at a low or high voltage threshold. The inverters need to automatically shut down if the voltage goes above 254 V and can switch themselves back when it returns below this level.
The chart below shows generation on one of the three phases overlaid with the voltage for that phase. It can be clearly seen that when the voltage rises above 254 V the inverter stops supplying electricity.
High voltages can also be damaging for other equipment on site as well, so the potential loss from leaving this unresolved is significantly greater.
Without Greensense View® monitoring the system in real-time, these problems can go undetected for long periods of time. Identifying the problem is half the solution, so armed with the right information, the client can now take remedial action.
Greensense View, our technology for real time monitoring of sustainability performance, has been built around a foundation that if building users have real-time, relevant information on their electricity, gas and water use, that information will drive behaviour change that results in greater resource efficiency.
A key part to this is the idea of behavioural change or behavioural economics. We believe that, while investment in technology and infrastructure are an important part of energy efficiency, a lot of benefit can be gained by engaging with your facility occupants and getting back to basic behavioural changes. Greensense View supports this by providing real time information that gives a baseline, and allows facility occupants to receive immediate feedback on how any changes impact energy use.
With that in mind — we want to introduce you to the Nudge. The Nudge was an idea originally conceived by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. A Nudge is about self consciously moving people in a direction that will make their lives better. It is a mechanism to promote desirable outcomes while respecting individual choices. We have used the Nudge as a concept in Greensense View and supporting the energy efficiency initiatives we are involved in with our clients.
We present four types of nudges that we believe should be used in combination to achieve the desired outcomes. There are:
1. Fun: this is abut positively engaging with your building occupants and finding innovative and fun ways to drive change, often with incentives.
2. The Stick: this about using policy or punishment to drive change.
3. Compelled: this is about creating a social norm, where everyone changes because everyone else is moving that way.
4. Informed: this is about providing information that causes someone to change their behaviour because of a new insight to the situation.
Here are some great example of nudges that use some or all of the above techniques:
For more information on how the Nudge and Greensense View work together please contact us.
A recent study from Syracuse University found that improving peoples understanding of energy use and savings could pay large dividends.
The study found that most people don’t really understand the energy use associated with activities like switching off lights and appliances, and energy efficiency improvements, like switching to more efficient appliances. On average, participants in the study underestimated energy use and savings of common activities by almost three times, with larger underestimates for high-energy activities.
Greensense View Example Dashboard
We think part of the answer is providing people with real-time feedback on their energy use. That’s why we developed Greensense View. We’re holding an event on Tuesday next week on Smart Technologies and Behavioural Change, if you’d like to find out more.
You can download the full paper from this study (PDF) from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
At Greensense we love hearing about innovative ideas that reduce our environmental impact and improve the sustainability of our cities. For a while we have been following the Bike Share schemes — particularly in Paris and Montreal — and were pleased to hear that recently the scheme has arrived in Australia.
Melbourne has just launched their scheme with 10 stations and 100 bikes, with a plan to scale to 50 stations and 600 bikes later in the year. We’ll be watching closely to see if this simple behavioural change can make a difference to CBD travel.
