Energy Saving Building Upgrades

The EPA’s Energy Star website offers a free Building Upgrade Manual online that can be used to help plan and implement profitable energy saving building upgrades. The manual includes five areas for upgrades:

• Recommissioning: testing existing building’s HVAC, controls, and electrical systems on a regular basis.
• Lighting: consumes 25% to 30% of energy in a commercial building and is a primary source of heat gain and waste heat.
• Load Reductions: supplemental load sources are secondary load contributors to energy consumption. Supplemental load sources include people, computers, lights, and the building itself. The effects of these sources can be controlled and reduced through strategic planning and the installation of energy efficient upgrades.
• Fan Systems: or air-handling systems can be upgraded and adjusted to optimize the delivery of air in the most energy efficient way.
• Heating and Cooling Systems: are the largest consumers of energy in a building. The manual includes checklists for the best ways to save energy and actions to take to improve energy efficiency.

Calculate the Watts

Watts, expressed as kilowatts (1,000 watts = 1 kilowatt), are what the utility companies measure to calculate monthly electrical bills. Controlling the wattage used for lighting is one way to control a power bill.

(1) Total number of kilowatts (kWh) used for the year: _______
(2) Total square feet of building: _________ft2
(3) Divide (1) by (2) to get kilowatt-hours per square foot: ________ kWh/ft2

This information can be used to set goals for saving, to conduct audits, to measure progress toward goals, to compare usage with other properties, and to provide managers with information on energy management effectiveness. Some managers use paper forms to develop energy use records; others use computer-based systems that perform sophisticated analyses and produce charts and graphs.