Archive for the ‘Energy Efficiency’ Category
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.
A new report issued today by the WA Auditor General reveals that a program to reduce energy use in WA Government agencies by 12% has only achieved a 0.1% reduction.
For those of you that prefer to think it terms of dollars and cents, that represents over $50 million in wasted energy over the last 7 years, or for the carbon-minded, 350,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Energy Smart Program was a brain child of the Gallop government. Introduced in 2002, its goal was to reduce energy consumption by 12% below 2001-02 levels by 2006-07 in agencies with 25 or more full time staff. The report states that whilst some agencies achieved the 12% target, these achievements were “offset by a lack of progress among the larger energy consuming agencies”.
The Auditor General lists a number of reasons for the failure of the scheme. In particular the report singles out the Sustainable Energy Development Office (SEDO), concluding that it was “not sufficiently strategic” in managing the program and using incentives and penalties to encourage agencies to reduce energy consumption.
“There were no consequences for failing to achieve expected results.”
For me this highlights a challenge we see every day at Greensense. Conservation of our resources, whether that’s energy or water, is a pretty abstract concept for most people and for many businesses. Traditionally our consumption of energy is not well understood — I challenge anyone to walk into their office and ask their colleagues how much energy their building consumes during a working day. The silence will be deafening — and, as we all know, its hard to manage a problem if it’s not well understood and good quality data isn’t available. If you don’t believe me, then ask yourself how successful you’d be with a diet if you didn’t weigh yourself regularly.
At Greensense we’re focussed on educating people in the language of energy conservation. Greensense View is all about increasing awareness of how the buildings we use every day are consuming energy and water, and what we can do to ensure they perform at their very best.
It’s been an exciting week in politics with Kevin Rudd deposed and the appointment of Australia’s first female Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said that she “will re-prosecute the case for a carbon price at home and abroad”, but that “rebuilding consensus” is a precursor to pricing carbon. This doesn’t give me any cause to think we will have an emissions trading scheme in the next couple of years, and if anything it suggests the Labor party might restart consultation and might consider a different policy direction entirely. A carbon tax, perhaps? After years of development and debate will the CPRS be abandoned?
Meanwhile, there is a renewed focus on energy efficiency. The Department of Climate Change was recently renamed ‘Climate Change & Energy Efficiency’. The (previous) Prime Minister established an energy efficiency taskforce and now new legislation has been passed for mandatory disclosure of building energy efficiency. Climate Works Australia, a non-profit ‘think tank’ found in their Low Carbon Growth Plan report that energy efficiency could save the Australian economy over $5 billion dollars by 2020. And the Energy Efficiency Council of Australia have just released their own report (PDF), which said that energy efficiency represented the “biggest, cheapest and fastest” way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and is now more urgent, “particularly with both major political parties delaying a carbon price”.
Perhaps while Julia Gillard is rebuilding consensus on a carbon price, we’ll see some new policies developed to further encourage energy efficiency?
Display Energy Certificate
In the UK, all public buildings greater than 1000sqm, such as schools, libraries, council buildings and hosptials are required to publicly display a display energy certificate. The energy certificates are like our NABERS Energy scheme in that they focus on actual energy use.
One government agency is going further. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is showing their energy performance in real-time on their home page. Like Greensense View, the DECC dashboard provides real-time feedback on energy use. For example, when I checked their website as I wrote this blog post, the energy they were using was responsible 231kg CO2e emissions per hour.
Greensense View can provide a public dashboard like this for your building right now. You can contact us to find out more or read more about Greensense View on our site. Greensense View has also just been listed the Energy Smart WA Directory.
The always excellent The Fifth Estate online green property newsletter has another great article this week: Apartment blocks the missing link in sustainability.
The author Lynne Blundell introduces the challenge for apartment blocks, saying:
“High rise apartment blocks, it turns out, are the biggest energy guzzlers in the residential market. But they are falling through the cracks when it comes to energy and water efficiency incentive schemes. It is something that local councils are acutely aware of while state and federal government appear to be turning a blind eye.”
While she provides a strong case that there is a big policy hole and some very specific challenges — such as the strata rules that govern changes to common areas, she mentions some really positive schemes too. Not unusually, it is local government that seems to be showing the way.
City of Sydney is providing funding for Green Strata Wiki to provide an online knowledge base about retrofitting existing apartment buildings. The council is also regularly running workshop for apartment owners with presentations from lawyers, water and energy companies and other sustainability experts.
Willoughby Council is also providing a grants scheme for improving the sustainability of apartments. The Climate Clever scheme has two parts – energy efficiency and solar photovoltaic, which provide dollar-for-dollar matching to successful owners corporations.
Sydney Water is piloting a programme called HiRise, which aims to improve the water-use efficiency of participating buildings by at least 10% by co-funding auditing, sub-metering and water efficiency improvements. According to Sydney water, one of the benefits of sub-metering is detecting leaks: “a leak could waste 73 kilolitres a day, amounting to $136 a day or $49,537 a year.”
One of the big challenges of sustainability upgrades is funding. Efficiency improvements will often pay for themselves over a few years, but owners corporations still need to find some capital upfront. This is still an issue when co-funding is available, such as with the schemes mentioned above.
Sustainability initiatives should start with measurement, whether that is an audit or better still installing sub-meters. A building dashboard. can help the owners corporation track energy and water used in common areas, and allow individual apartment owners to measure their own performance, compared to others in the complex.
Sub-metering can also open the door to a big financial benefit, which can help address the funding challenge.
Most residential apartment blocks in WA are on the standard residential electricity tariff with each apartment owner individually billed by Synergy. However, except for small apartment blocks, the total electricity used by these buildings will be above the ‘contestable level’ of 50,000kWh per year. This means the Owners Corporation could enter into a supply contract with another retailer at commercial rates.
Multi-residential buildings are quite attractive to retailers because the load profile is different to other commercial buildings and significant discounts on the standard residential tarrif are available. The discount can be as much as 40% in some cases. The owners corporation then needs to charge individual apartment owners for the electricity use along with their strata fees.
Our wireless sub-meters and energy monitoring dashboard can enable this kind of solution, help make apartment blocks more sustainable, and save money through efficiency and lower electricity prices.
There are a number of worthwhile programmes in progress at the moment which have taken my interest, and I thought I would share some of them with you. While climate change issues seem to have taken a back step to health and taxes in the political arena, it’s nice to see some of these programmes taking place to keep our mind on things we can all be doing.
During May, here in Western Australia, daysofchange.org has been running a very comprehensive multi-channel campaign on broad sustainability changes that everyone can make in their lives both at home and work . One of the things I like about this programme is that it gives you the opportunity to state the actions you are already undertaking, as well as pledge to make new improvements in your life. If you haven’t been to their web site to fill out your profile, it’s not too late!
Another programme starting this week has a more specific focus — International Green IT Awareness Week www.greenitweek.org. This event promises some very practical presentations as well as good resources on the event website. You might like to send a link to your IT Manager.
The web sites both post tips about improvements you can make. Even though the audiences are very different for these programmes, one of the themes you can see on both these web sites is the monitoring of energy consumption. Our Greensense View product is designed specifically to help organisations tackle this issue. We believe this is a great way to drive energy efficiency programmes that save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Globally, the building sector contributes to about 40% of the world’s energy consumption and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. Within Australia the building sector accounts for 19% of energy consumption and 23% of greenhouse gas emissions. Clearly we need to start making our buildings “healthy” by finding innovative ways to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for.
The National Strategy on Energy Efficiency (NSEE) has been designed to improve the minimum standards of energy efficiency to households and business by accelerating the introduction and take up of new energy efficient technologies. Part of this involves the creation of an outcomes based National Building Energy Standard-Setting, Assessment and rating Framework. The DCC has just released a discussion paper relating to this with comments closing on the 7th May.
At Greensense, we recognise the need to have “healthy” buildings which is why we have just released Greensense View: our real time, wireless energy sensing and interactive dashboard tool designed to assist in behavioural change of building users to drive energy efficiency. While we support the NSEE we are keen to work with companies who want to start making practical changes now — if that is you then we would love to hear from you.
In a recent announcement by the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, from the second half of 2010 owners of commerical office buildings will be required to disclose energy efficiency ratings when they lease or sell their property.
Specifically, building owners will need to provide a current Building Energy Efficiency Certificate (BEEC), including a NABERS Energy base building star rating, when selling or leasing. These certificates are valid for 12 months and once the legislation is in place, owners of non-compliant buildings will face a fine or prosecution.
To begin with, the rules will only apply to the sale or lease of office space of more than 2,000 square meters. It is expected that around 2,170 commercial office buildings will be required to provide energy efficiency ratings, from a national total of 3,900 buildings.
The legislation is designed to help prospective buyers and tenants make more informed decisions when they’re looking for office space. Public disclosure of energy efficiency ratings will hopefully create a market that rewards better performing buildings and stimulates greater investment in energy efficiency as buyers and tenants demand buildings that are more efficient.
In early 2010 Greensense will be launching a real-time energy and greenhouse emissions management dashboard for commerical buildings.
If you’re the owner or operator of a commerical office building and would like to understand what this new legislation means for you, you can contact me at peter@greensense.com.au
The energy minister has just announced the development of a new energy strategy for Western Australia, which is good news. The discussion paper is available now.
One of the goals of the strategy is to increase the level of renewable energy generation in the state to be in line with the Federal Government’s 20% Target by 2020.
Currently it is around 3.8% and lower still in regional areas. Based on the generation figures for 2008, there was 1066MW of new non-renewable generation in development versus only 41MW of renewable generation. It will be very interesting to see what actions the State Government might take to encourage more renewable generation.
One topic that seems to be entirely absent from the discussion paper is energy efficiency. Efficiency measures usually present cheaper and faster ways of reducing greenhouse emissions and use of fossil fuels and this will hopefully get a lot more attention in the final strategy.
An interesting chain of events during the week: The Clean Energy Council released a report after engaging Access Economics to quantify the net impact on employment as a result of the current Government’s State and Federal climate change policies.
The report concluded that 28,230 full time equivalent (FTE) positions will be created over the period 2010 to 2020. Of that, 4,000 relate to jobs associated with the construction of new generating capacity based on the Renewable Energy Target.
Follow that up today with an announcement that RET has been delayed as Family First senator Steve Fielding launched a committee enquiry into the RET bill. The committee is due to report back on August 12.
Clean Energy Council Chief Executive, Matthew Warren, released a statement predicting the decision will only further delay clean energy projects which are poised to create thousands of new jobs and stimulate multi-billion dollar investments in regional Australia.
Mr Warren said Australia’s emerging solar PV industry will bear the immediate brunt of today’s latest political posturing, with dynamic new companies halted in their tracks and now making forced job cuts as demand dries up. “Clean energy companies around Australia will now put hiring plans on hold and in some cases be forced to start shedding staff,” he said.
At Greensense we believe the target needs to be set and legislation passed to bring the certainty that business needs to release investment into this important piece of the emission reduction puzzle.
Sunday evening’s TV news featured a story that 500 homes in Perth would participate in a trial to receive real-time energy meters in their homes. These energy meters allow residents to see how much electricity is being used across the whole house at any instant in time.
This is a great initiative, and I advocate this type of technology for a number of reasons.
One of the main problems with trying to reduce electricity use is that it is difficult to see exactly when and where electricity is being used. Most people know that devices can use significant amounts of electricity, even when in stand-by mode, but the question is, how are you supposed to know how much each of your devices use?
This kind of meter gives you the ability to turn on and off devices around the home and determine the effect on total electricity consumption in real-time. This then gives you the ability to make an informed decision about how and when you use your devices.
However, there is a much more important benefit. The simple act of providing direct feedback to users of their energy use can achieve a reduction in that energy use by a significant amount. The news story claims up to 25% reduction. A report titled The Effectiveness Of Feedback On Energy Consumption published by University of Oxford, Environmental Change Institute (2006) states up to 15%. Regardless of the exact figure, behaviour change can be triggered just by providing better information.
How can this cross over into the business world?
Many companies are planning to implement energy efficiency programmes as part of EEO, in preparation for the CPRS, or simply to save money in these difficult economic times. Changing people’s behaviour is one of the most powerful ways to implement energy efficiency.
If your business is interested in innovative use of real-time electricity monitoring, or other strategies for energy efficiency in the corporate world, please contact us here at Greensense.
The two photos below are of Perth CBD. The top photo was taken on a weekday evening in July 2008 at about 8pm in the evening. The photo below was taken a few days later on a Sunday night at pretty much the same time. *
So why is it that Perth’s office buildings are lit up like a Christmas tree on a weekday evening but not at the weekend? Some some crude estimates (based on counting office floors that are lit) suggest that 60% fewer lights are left on over a weekend evening than at the same time during the week.
I think it’s safe to say that it isn’t because Perth’s offices are full of hard working employees at 8pm on a weekday evening. Sure, there’ll be a few folk burning the midnight oil but most of this lighting is going to waste.
Let’s try and work out what this equates to in terms of CO2 emissions. We’ll pick on Central Park as it’s the tallest building on Perth’s skyline. In an earlier post we estimated Central Park’s emissions at around 16,000 tonnes CO2e per year
Now we know that lighting is responsible for around 21% of electricty consumption in commercial offices. Based on that we can estimate that lighting in Central Park generates around 3,200 tonnes CO2e per year or an average 9 tonnes per day. Down at this level it becomes clear that leaving lights burning unnecessarily, even for only an extra hour or two every day, can in itself be a significant cause emissions.
So what can we do about it?
There are only two ways that lights get turned off — either it’s the last person to leave the office at night or the building management system (BMS) does it for us. Certainly for larger office buildings like Central Park a BMS will be controlling many aspects of the office environment. Making sure that your BMS is configured correctly and reminding staff of the importance of turning out lights when they go home at night are easy and very cost effective ways to reduce the emissions generated by your office space.
* It’s worth noting that these photos were taken after the explosion at Apache Energy’s Varanus facility which lead to a significant energy shortage in Western Australia. Most office buildings in Perth were supposedly doing everything they could to reduce their power consumption. Even the neon advertising on the tops of the buildings had been turned off!
