Although I missed the free facilitated session offered by ACT and Teignbridge District Council, I was already familiar with the assessment approach available to TECs members. So it was relatively easy for me spot that the community centre I was asked to look at was using an unusually large amount of electricity (over 18,000kWh p.a.
My challenge came when I tried to identify where all this consumption was being used. The baseload, i.e. consumption when no one was using the building, was about 1.3 kW. That is equivalent to 11,388 kWh p.a. or over 60% of their total electricity usage. A lot of energy and a lot of money which needed to be justified or reduced.
The centre is a 4-year-old ‘eco’ building, but most appliances were wired in so difficult to measure using the monitoring plugs. I decided to approach this systematically, as my ACT friends keep reminding me. I took monthly readings from all the meters available in the centre, this included solar PV and battery systems. Once I saw the baseload, it was clear that I needed to find out what. It was also clear that I needed to call ACT for help.
The ACT Energy group quickly mobilised an inspection team bringing with them some monitoring plugs from their ‘My Electricity’ programme. We walked round the building to identify the most likely culprits using the list of electrical items and their typical consumption in the My Electricity tool. We managed to identify a few, computer screens, a large photocopier, several instant hot-water elements and a noisy fan, all left on when no one was in the building.
It became clear that we needed more detailed consumption readings which only a smart meter per fuse circuit could provide. As this is a public building, ACT put me in contact with a new company focused on low-carbon energy solutions. The building owner agreed to pay for this analysis in the expectation that the savings were likely to exceed the modest price of fitting a large number of monitoring points and analysing the results.
What a surprise when Sunny Patch shared their findings. There were indeed several opportunities to significantly reduce our baseload and therefore our overall consumption, probably by more that least 50%. They provided me with the very detailed raw data for further analysis as well as the summarised results using the ‘My Electricity’ tool.
The main culprit turned out to something labelled “trace heating”. It turned out to be coils around all hot water taps running continuously, all year round. It looks like this solution was considered best to deal with legionella, but had been set to run continuously. A simple change of setting to ‘eco’ would reduce consumption by 70% and still deliver well beyond the required legionella regulation. That’s saving of total annual electricity use of ~7,800 kWh or an amazing 2,144 kg of ghg emissions avoided each year. Not many renewable generation schemes can achieve this level of ghg reduction at comparable cost/effort per tonne.
I’ll be looking to find a further 1,200 worth of savings. I’m already considering where else to use this assessment approach and tools in my area. If these are the easy savings from an ‘eco’ business building, there must be at least as much potential in older ones. I’m told the facilitated sessions offered by ACT/TDC have already identified savings for households who’ve taken up this free offer.