All successful energy management programs have certain steps in common; a system for tracking energy use in the building, knowledge of the features in the building that use energy, and a management strategy for reviewing and improving building performance. These three steps must be undertaken, but there is no prescription for which must be implemented first, or specifically how they must be carried out.

Tracking of energy use is a good place to start. The goal is to provide energy data in an organized and usable form so that sound business decisions may be made. By looking at past performance you can establish a baseline against which to measure your impact. You can identify areas of existing high energy use and use that information to prioritize where to focus your next efforts. Sometimes, by reviewing billing patterns you are able to identify problems that can immediately save the school money.

By comparing energy consumption with the average for similar buildings or for the same building over a period of time, it is often possible to identify when equipment begins to malfunction.

In this chapter you will design or chose a system for tracking energy use in your school. You will research and report on how your school is charged for water, energy, and removal of solid waste. You will implement a system for tracking energy and water consumption including recording your school’s use records for the past year and implementing a system to capture and record these records over the course of your project.

To be successful you will need the support of office personnel in you school or district who have access to the utility records of your school. With their support and help from the utility service providers you should be able to understand how you are charged; something you need to know if you are to identify and prioritize different savings opportunities.

Use your team. Take advantage of members with computer strengths to research and implement the tools you use to record the energy use data. Take advantage of members with strong people skills to work with the office personnel to obtain the school’s billing history. Divide up the work so while one individual or group is researching how the school is charged for electricity, another is researching natural gas, a third is looking into solid waste, and a forth is looking at water and sewage. Then report back to the full group and write it up so your work can benefit others who follow and so you complete that portion of your final report while it is fresh.

Energy accounting is something that every energy manager needs to do. As a consequence, there are a number of programs readily available to help organize the data. Some like ENACT, developed by the Washington State Energy Office, are very elaborate. They can track multiple buildings and follow different energy forms and water usage. It corrects for weather variations and produces a number of reports and graphs enabling you to easily compare data from different time periods. Along with the higher degree of sophistication, ENACT requires a significant amount of time and resources to input data. If you are only following one or two buildings one typically does not need such a sophisticated program and can use a spreadsheet. Again some pre-made ones are available or you can make your own to fit your specific situation. The table appearing later in this chapter can easily be converted to a spreadsheet to capture both energy and water use and cost. Such a table enables comparisons between different time periods. As presented however, the table does not include information that would permit corrections for variations in weather or changes in how the buildings are used.

Potential resources for locating available tracking software include your state energy office, the facility managers responsible for you school or your district, or your local utility. If your school or district has a Resource Conservation Manager (RCM), see them. They are probably already tracking energy use at your school.

Spend time understanding how your school is billed for utilities. Then test your understanding by reconstructing a few of the bills to be sure you calculate the same value as reflected in the billing. For example a typical bill for electrical service to a residence includes a fixed charge associated with the utility having to maintain and read a meter and hook-up at your home. The rest of the charge is associated with how much electricity in kilowatt hours (KWH) you used during the year. Electricity charges can vary based on usage depending on how the rates are structured. For example sometimes one rate may apply for the first 300 kWH and a different rate for additional consumption. Electricity rates for schools and other commercial buildings typically have the same elements as the residential rates plus a "capacity demand charge". This charge is based on the highest "demand" or largest number of kilowatts required by the school over a 15 or 30 minute period during the billing period. "Demand" is often a control issue. For example if all the lights, electric ceramic kilns and ovens, air handling motors, and electric water and portable space heaters turn on at the same time, the demand charge will be very high. But if you can fire the ceramics at night when other equipment is not being used, the school can save money by lowering demand even though they are using the same amount of energy. In many locations, electricity rates for commercial buildings will vary based on the time of day when electricity is used.

Once energy data has been collected and organized, it must be made comprehensible to those who will use it or to those who you will present it to. It is important to identify the audience that will be using the energy data to make decisions. In addition to transmitting data, reports may be used to generate awareness, motivate and reward, or serve as a public relations tool.

To best convey information it is necessary to get the readers attention. Colorful graphs, tables, and pie charts provide essential information, but in a more visually appealing form than text. Many graphics programs are now available in schools such as Harvard Graphics and Freelance that allow graphs on color transparencies or slide film. Graphs include the following:

Other Graphs:

Avoided Costs
Annual Savings
12 Month Rolling Summary (MMBTU, kWh, therm, $)
Btu/Sq.Ft./Degree-Day
Utility Costs/Unit ($/therm, cents/kWH, $/kW)
Building Comparisons (Total Energy, by month)

These graphs generally require additional computations, but can be well worth the effort to emphasize a particular point or better understand a consumption trend.

Analysis (Natural Gas Example)

In the workbook you looked at "outliers" as a way of identifying problem areas. Seasonal loads, such as heating or air conditioning, are identified as the portion of consumption or cost located above the line used to establish base loads on the graph (usually the annual average which is equal to Total Annual Energy Cost / 12 = Monthly Average Cost) or for a school, the baseload may be a month when the school operates, but when heating or cooling is not needed.

High seasonal loads may reveal an opportunity to reduce consumption by making improvements to the heating and air conditioning equipment, temperature controls, the building envelope, or to other systems affected by seasonal operation.

In order for energy consumption data to have a meaning, a baseline year is needed as a standard for comparison. This is important to see how you are doing over time. Are energy costs going up? By how much? Typically, the year previous to initiating an Energy Management Program is used in order to show how much progress has been made since that year. If complete records are not available for that year, use a more recent year or an average of several previous years to obtain typical values.

B. Convert each energy type to BTUs

C. Report your findings to your full group. Emphasize any anomalies or areas that you feel warrant further investigation.