Plugged into Energy Use

Knowing how facilities use - and plan to use - energy can increase the EFFECTIVENESS OF TECHNOLOGIES designed to help cut power costs

More than one facility executive has tried to reduce energy costs by shutting off hallway lights, adjusting HVAC set-points and turning off unused computers and copy machines.

While those tried-and-true methods work, they are only as effective as building occupants' tolerances for walking in the dark, breaking a sweat in their cubicles and waiting for a computer to reboot.

Reducing energy costs by merely cutting the amount of kilowatts facilities consume is a nice start. But really, it's that - a start. Making an effective dent in energy costs requires a deeper understanding of energy than just how much electricity facilities use.

Facility executives serious about reducing energy costs - not just energy consumption - should know how their facilities use electricity, what the electricity is used for and how they would get by without it.
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"We know, and have learned the hard way, that it's not just enough to have enough widgets - energy-efficient windows, lights and other things," says Evan Mills, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "You have to make sure they're applied correctly."

Knowing which widgets can best be applied to reduce energy expenses starts with knowing how much energy use costs the organization, says Mills. To the surprise of some, that's usually more than just the product of the number of kilowatt-hours used and the electric rate.

BEYOND KWH

There are a number of charges that electric utilities bill to customers that have little to do with how much electricity is consumed in each billing cycle. Those charges include connection charges, fees based on the time of day that electricity is consumed and the quality of the power measured as it exits the facility. And for those facility executives who lease space, there could be additional charges that the building owner collects based on the presumption that each tenant is responsible for a certain amount of electricity, so-called common charges.

The key to reducing those charges is to understand how they are determined and how they can be controlled.

Organizations pay connection charges, also known as customer charges, for simply having the ability to draw electricity from the utility grid. To a certain extent, the charge is based on the amount of electricity the facility expects to use, not how much it actually uses. The fee is set based upon the facility's rate class. All commercial buildings of a size and type, for example, would likely pay the same connection charge.

What's important for facility executives to understand about those charges, says Lindsay Audin, president of the energy consulting firm EnergyWiz, is that connection charges comprise a larger percentage of the electric bill as energy use declines. That means a high connection charge will remain so even if energy usage drops.

An important part in controlling a facility's energy bill has to do with determining how much electricity is expected to be used monthly. When setting electric service requirements, facility executives undoubtedly want to allow for a facility's electricity use to grow as the organization expands.

Sometimes, however, that anticipated growth is never realized because the organization changes location rather than expanding within its existing facility. It might also not be realized because the equipment placed in service to accommodate expansion will be more energy efficient than originally thought. Replacement lamps, ballasts, cooling technologies and office equipment will be more efficient than the original equipment.

One of the most important reasons facility executives should get a handle on anticipated electricity load, Audin says, is because of the relationship between kilowatts and back-up power demands. And the more important power is to the organization, the more important it is to figure loads accurately.

A mission-critical facility that uses 4,000 kw, for example, would likely want 7,000 kw of back-up generation available. The extra capacity is necessary in case a generator is offline for maintenance or fails to start when needed.

"If you're only using 1,000 kw instead of the 4,000 kw you thought you were going to use, you've got a lot invested in equipment that's not ever going to be used," Audin says.

Cyrus Izzo, senior vice president of online environments for the Syska Hennessy Group, an engineering firm, suggests facility executives develop a five-year plan to determine how much energy their facilities will need. He cites one firm, a data center based in North Carolina, that looked at how much energy the company used at each of its various facilities located around the country. From there, it used historical data to determine the likelihood of expansion within five years and then determined how large the expansion would be.

What resulted, Izzo says, was a plan that will allow the company to expand with minimal disruption to its business, while in the meantime avoiding unnecessary cost