EMOs - Energy Management Opportunities

EMOs - Energy Management Opportunities

All energy consuming equipment and systems were designed to meet a specific need or set of needs. This may be as simple as providing illumination in the case of a lighting system, or far more complex as in the case of the building HVAC system. Finding energy savings opportunities involves reducing the level of energy use while still meeting the original need or requirement.
EMOs represents how energy can be used wisely to save money and to limit environmental impacts.
An Energy Audit is a study of how energy is used in a facility and an analysis of what alternatives could be used to reduce energy costs.
This process starts by collecting information on the facility’s operation and about its past record of utility bills. This data is then analyzed to get a picture of how the facility uses ( and possibly wastes) energy, and identify EMO’s.
Major Systems To Consider: Building Envelope, HVAC System, Electrical Supply System, Lighting, Boilers and Steam System, Hot Water System, Compressed Air System, Electric Motors, and Special Purpose Equipment.

Energy Audit Levels
There is no universally accepted standard that sets out the scope for conducting an energy audit,  there are three basic types, or levels of an energy audit, namely:
Walk-Through Audit
Comprehensive Audit
Investment Grade Energy Audit
Primarily the major difference between each type is the quantity of data collected and measured. In turn, this impacts the time required to conduct the audit, the time is taken to analyze the data, and hence the cost.
Each type or level is increasingly sophisticated, starting from the simplest walk-through audit up to the investment grade audit.
The resulting output or deliverable from every energy audit investigation is the energy audit report.
This report needs to be a meaningful document comprising the following basic elements:
1-Information about the energy systems and condition
2-Fuel usage
3-Energy usage summary, with charts
4-EMO's (Opportunities to save money)

SIGN UP

Base Load, Peak Load, and Load Factor

Base Load, Peak Load, and Load Factor

What are Base Load and Peak Load?
Load, in electrical engineering, is the amount of current being drawn by all the components (appliances, motors, machines, etc.).

The load is further categorized as base load and peak load depending upon the nature of the electrical components connected. As you may be familiar, all electrical appliances at your home do not run at all times.

A toaster or microwave oven may be used for a few minutes, a television or computer may be used for a few hours, lighting in the house is only required during the evening and so on.
There are several appliances which keep running at all the times, no matter what. The refrigerator, for example, has to be plugged in at all the times. Another such example is the heating, ventilation and cooling systems in the house (HVAC system).

Peak Load and Base Load defined
Baseload is the minimum level of electricity demand required over a period of 24 hours. It is needed to provide power to components that keep running at all times (also referred as continuous load).

Peak load is the time of high demand. These peaking demands are often for only shorter durations. In mathematical terms, peak demand could be understood as the difference between the base demand and the highest demand.

Now going back to the examples of household loads: microwave oven, toaster, and television are examples of peak demand, whereas refrigerator and HVAC systems are examples of base demand.

Load Factor
Load factor is the ratio of average electricity use vs. maximum electrical demand for a given time period. For example, if you use 60.8 kWh of electricity in a 24-hour period, your average electricity use is 2.5 kW per hour (60.8/24). If during this period, your electrical demand spikes to a peak of 8.6 kW even briefly, your load factor is only 29.1% (2.5/8.6).

The closer your load factor is to 100% (load factor 1.0) the better. On the other hand, the lower your load factor percentage, the more you pay in demand charges. Why? Because your electric utility must ensure it has the generation capacity to meet your peak demand even if you need it for only a short time. This capacity is expensive to maintain--and guess who ultimately pays for it.

SIGN UP

Energy Economics

Energy Economics
Energy is critically important to the modern global economy. New sources of energy supplies are essential to tackle global warming, keep the lights on and enable production. The price of energy impacts on domestic competitiveness, on living standards, and on fuel poverty, while new technologies can be a major driver of sustainable development.
Energy economics or more precisely economics of energy is a branch of applied economics where economic principles and tools are applied to "ask the right questions" (Stevens 2000) and to analyze them logically and systematically to develop a well-informed understanding of the issues.
Energy accounting is a system used to measure, analyze and report the energy consumption of different activities on a regular basis.This is done to improve energy efficiency, and to monitor the environmental impact of energy consumption.
Energy economics is the field that studies the human utilization of energy resources and energy commodities and the consequences of that utilization.  In physical science terminology, “energy” is the capacity for doing work, e.g., lifting, accelerating, or heating material.  In economic terminology, “energy” includes all energy commodities and energy resources, commodities or resources that embody significant amounts of physical energy and thus offer the ability to perform work.  Energy commodities - e.g., gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas, propane, coal, or electricity –  can be used to provide energy services for human activities, such as lighting, space heating, water heating, cooking, motive power, electronic activity. Energy resources - e.g., crude oil, natural gas, coal, biomass, hydro, uranium, wind, sunlight, or geothermal deposits – can be harvested to produce energy commodities.

esmsconsulting@naderawads.com