What happens when you land a project, create an energy efficiency plan and you see that your plan is not working? Don’t give up yet, we have some great insights and tips to share if you’re in this situation…
101 On Energy Efficiency Plan Mistakes: Learning From Others’ Experiences
When considering how to manage your company’s energy usage, it might be useful to look at others’ experiences. The possible benefits are clear: start making energy efficiency plans work, reduce energy costs and become more environmentally friendly.
Each company is unique and will have its own circumstances. However, can get powerful insights that can guide your own process by looking at what other companies have gone through. To do this, compare the challenges these companies faced before implementing energy optimising efforts to yours. See if you can relate to their situation and examine the actions they took, as well as their results.
Today we did exactly that, analysing a real business case to deliver you great tips for buildings that have a green design and construction but haven’t achieved savings so far. This is really common in the industry. But you need to keep in mind that “green building” does not automatically mean energy efficiency.
This is what happened to Radisson Blu Hotel in the UK’s East Midlands. This building has been known as “the greenest hotel in UK”. It was built according to BREEAM recommendations and achieved excellence and “eco-hotel” labelling for its sustainable construction and executed other green measures. Although the hotel tried to maximise its energy efficiency, the results weren’t as expected. They had done everything right except one important thing.
But…why was their energy efficiency plan not working?
Tips On Making An Energy Efficiency Plan Work: The Radisson Blu Hotel Experience
If your company already has “green” measures put in place but they aren’t yielding the expected results, assess their performance. Discover what isn’t working to get them back on track and reduce your energy consumption to its lowest levels. With the help of DEXMA and Optimised Buildings, the Hotel integrated its existing resources into a new system. Through these actions, they achieved a global reduction of kWh usage of 30%.
- In the first place, measure your current energy consumption with an energy management software. This will help you notice the impact of the optimisation measures that you will carry out. If you already have a BMS (Building Management System) put in place, you are one step ahead on the integration with this software. With a BMS you must already have submeters installed. These submeters are the first requisite to start tracking your energy usage.
- Next, track the existing resources and equipment to quickly detect anomalies on their performance. Check their operation to make them work the most efficient way possible. DEXMA’s Platform, together with the professional knowledge of our partners, carries out a follow up of the performance of the existing systems. It notifies you if there are any inefficiencies you should correct.
- Once all your energy efficiency systems are working as they should on their own, make sure they are all working together as a system. You can achieve this by regularly monitoring the system’s performance and taking measures when needed. This will maximise the whole system’s efficiency and cut operational costs. The result will be, as it was for the Radisson Blu Hotel, achieving considerable savings.
For your company to become energy efficient and reap the benefits, it is necessary that all of the elements affecting your energy consumption work in unison. Having different energy efficiency measures put in place throughout your company is not enough. Monitoring is a key action that must be carried out parallel to the whole energy efficiency plan. If you don’t have a reference consumption level and can’t see your system’s performance in terms of this reference, you won’t be able to know if everything is working as it should be and take the relevant measures in case it’s not.
For more information on this case study, download it here:
