The real power of real-time data

BMS, Controls, EcoDriver
Real-time displays played an important part in helping central-Government departments reduce energy consumption by 13.8% in a year. You can view live and historical data using links at the end of the article.

Real-time displays played a key part in helping central-Government buildings reduce their energy consumption — and can do the same for you if the information is properly used, as John Taylor explains. You can also view live data from Government buildings.

On Friday 14 May 2010 the Prime Minister made a commitment to cut emissions by 10% across central-Government in the first 12 months of the new Parliament. He also announced that to be more transparent, all central-Government HQ buildings would publish their energy consumption, online, using real-time data.

In July 2011 the Government reported that emissions had been reduced by 13.8%, exceeding the target by 3.8%, with energy bills reduced by £13 million. This article examines the contribution that real-time displays (RTDs) made to this highly successful programme and how they could be further developed and more widely used in energy-efficiency programmes.

The basic idea of publishing energy-consumption statistics to encourage building occupants to avoid energy waste is not new, nor is it revolutionary. There are many notice boards in offices and factories around the UK with coloured charts and spreadsheets, produced monthly or even weekly by energy managers, designed to enthuse staff to look for ways to reduce energy consumption.

What is new, however, is that using wireless communication technologies and the ubiquity of the Internet and the world-wide web, these displays can be compiled automatically and delivered electronically, not just to the building’s occupants but to the whole world, and not weekly but minutes after the energy has actually been consumed.

Theoretically, by changing behaviour today, energy consumption can be reduced today and the impact observed almost immediately. So, much like driving a car, the analogy goes, using your knowledge of the prevailing speed limit and your dashboard speedometer, you drive carefully and save fuel. By ‘driving’ a building using an RTD, you avoid wasting energy, money and CO2 emissions and you avoid missing your targets.

But is it really that easy and that simple?

Lighting and HVAC services in modern buildings are usually fully automated, so apart from switching off their PCs, there is little more that occupants can do to reduce energy consumption. But this of course assumes that the building is already being operated in the most energy-efficient way and, as evidenced by poor DEC ratings and survey after survey of building energy performance survey after survey, this is not the case.

By publishing energy-consumption statistics online and using these displays to regularly assess the performance of the personnel tasked with operating a building (the facilities team), operational performance can be improved ,and this has been observed in several central-Government HQ buildings where RTDs were installed.

During October 2010, the relative performance of the central-Government HQs using RTDs was displayed via a webpage at www.data.gov.uk. It was apparent that this ‘competition’ focused efforts and resulted in significant reductions in energy consumption.

BMS, Controls, EcoDriver

Whilst publishing relative performance in this way causes organisations to compete, what was missing from many of the RTDs used in these buildings was some indication of their absolute performance against individual targets.

Whilst publishing energy-consumption statistics is quite interesting, presenting performance against targets is fundamentally useful. An RTD with targets and a method of generating alerts when it appears that consumption might exceed targets (not when they have already been exceeded) is a useful tool for those tasked with minimising waste. If some appropriate level of occupancy control is introduced the RTD can be a useful method of engaging others in helping reduce a buildings energy consumption.

Whilst monitoring, targeting and reporting capabilities are a fundamental component in achieving energy efficiencies, the real key, however, is the implementation and operation of a proactive energy-efficiency programme supported by these capabilities. Unless a programme of continuous improvement is put in place, initial gains are often lost over time (as personnel change and systems are adjusted and upgraded), so instead of implementing carefully evaluated, cost-beneficial, energy-efficiency projects in a systematic manner, the latest unproven panacea is procured, and high expectations are often not realised.

So whilst it is important and very useful to be able to easily see, in near real-time, the energy performance of a building (as distinct from just the energy consumption) and whilst this can result in significant improvements in energy efficiency through the ‘nudge’ effect, these improvements may be bought at great expense in terms of people’s time and other resources.

To achieve sustainable net savings, energy-performance displays need to be supplemented with suitable alerting and analysis capabilities and accompanied by a systematic energy-efficiency programme that ensures that the benefits always outweigh the costs.

At least one prominent central-Government ministry has sought to apply this approach to improve the performance of its HQ building and in a little over 12 months achieved (and sustained) reductions in energy consumption of over 20%, with a value of about £250 000.

John Taylor is managing director of ecoDriver

You can actually view live and historical data for a number of Government buildings and departments using the address below, followed by any of the following: moj; homeoffice; mod; dft; dfid or ons

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