Mysterious energy audit found

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The word audit has sent cold shivers down the spine of many a business executive in the past, yet undeservedly so, because after all is an audit not simply a business check to see if all is well?

The Energy Audit is perhaps the most misunderstood, and therefore the least utilized of all Australian business tools. This is so even though the quality of its procedure has been covered by Australian Standard 3598 for quite some time now.

It is now many years ago that a handful of interested engineers joined with some visionary business executives to establish a standardized means of reversing the effect of their ever-spiraling electricity/gas bills. The Energy Audit was born and since then a slowly increasing number of Australian businesses have become aware of this valuable tool which shows them how to substantially reduce their recurring business expenses for energy bills for electricity and gas permanently, thereby bumping their bottom line and putting them ahead of their competition.

What exactly is an energy audit?

The Energy Efficiency consultant examines and analyzes the accuracy of all energy bills over the last two years, and the economy of the related electricity/gas charge rates, and also examines the energy efficiency of the building structures, plus all energy consuming equipment within, together with all energy consuming practices.

The consultant then prepares a comprehensive Energy Audit Report which makes custom-designed, point-by-point recommendations for all energy efficient improvements to ensure lower electricity bills/gas bills, permanently.

Erwin Tischler, an electrical engineer, is the business owner of RE Developments Company in NSW an energy efficiency consultancy which specializes in energy audits. He works in consultation with Angelo Franco, a specialist mechanical engineer and says

"An Australia-wide, Federal Government survey of a large sample of energy audits, of all size businesses a few years ago, showed that savings identified an average of 20% of energy bills. If one extrapolates this statistic across our vast continent, we arrive at the unbelievable fact that Australian businesses are currently paying billions more than what is necessary for their electricity/gas bills, and are therefore also contributing to the unnecessary emission of an equally staggering amount of greenhouse gases.

However things are changing, public opinion appears to reshaping business decisions. We have noticed a recent ground swell of interest in Energy Audits over the last 12 months, because not only do such audits identify substantial savings in energy bills, they also identify the all important related savings in greenhouse gas emissions which cause climate change through global warming. We now see that it is the environmental factor that drives many businesses - equally with monetary savings."

What can an audit achieve?

Case Study: The graph shows the energy-escalating effects of an air conditioning control system that had accidentally malfunctioned; this fact was recently reported in an energy audit for a medium size office block in Parramatta NSW.

What happened? Their large, central air conditioning system was meant to operate from 8am - 6pm Monday - Friday, but instead was operating 24/7 without anyone being aware of it for six months (see the pink trend line).

An Energy Audit identified this and found that the offender was a faulty 24 hour time clock control which cost the business $750 to replace, and then saved them around $30,000 per annum on future, inflated energy bills.

Energy savings achieved also equated to an annual cut-back of around 300,000 kg of carbon dioxide gas emissions.

Without graphical analysis which checked back 2 years, such gradual energy increases may have gone unnoticed permanently, thereby costing the building owner not only a fortune on future electricity bills, and related greenhouse emissions, but also skyrocketing their future air conditioning maintenance costs.

The findings on all types of commercial premises indicate that the above example is not rare, and is the norm rather than the exception.

Why is this so? A building is the same as a car, its energy-consuming equipment can go slowly out of tune, yet it can still appear to be driving quite well, even though fuel consumption is dramatically increasing. Similarly a building can appear to have adequate lighting and adequate air conditioning and an adequate work production line, but may be performing very badly on the energy-efficiency scale.

Never-the-less the building owner (or their agent) faithfully keeps on paying the grossly inflated bills year after year, completely oblivious to the fact that they are literally throwing away $100,000's every year in a large business.

The energy auditor can pick such problems by checking the equipment, the related control systems and methods of use and then comparing the building's energy use against established industry energy benchmarks for the particular category of business (e.g. energy used / sq m / annum).

Energy Audits can often identify savings well in excess of the 20% national average by identifying out-dated, energy controls and out-dated energy consuming equipment in older buildings and then making technical recommendations for its gradual replacement in accordance with the latest, best-practice methods. This in effect, largely updates the old building to the energy efficiency status of a new building.

A couple of recent examples are 2 to 4 level office blocks at Lithgow and Wollongong, for which the Energy Audits identified electricity bill savings of 48% and 75% respectively through the gradual renewal of aging lighting and air conditioning services.

Maintenance Savings

An additional benefit from saving energy, which is often overlooked, is a substantial reduction in recurring maintenance costs. This is brought about by the side effect of energy savings, which usually involves an induced reduction in the unnecessary run hours of equipment, and the fact that some equipment is also run at a much reduced capacity, therefore appliances, lights, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and production plants etc last much longer before needing maintenance.

When one then adds maintenance savings to energy savings, the returns from investing in energy saving measures become very lucrative indeed.

Safety Aspect

Erwin says that yet an additional benefit is the fact that, during the audit, the building and the building services are inspected by professional engineers who are capable of recognizing and reporting on any potentially dangerous situations in buildings and building services.

Nowadays, under current OH&S Regulations, the Energy Auditor is seen as a professional observer and is therefore legally obliged to report any obvious, potentially dangerous situations, irrespective of whether or not these situations directly relate to the work for which they have been commissioned.

Case study: While checking for air conditioning energy savings, Angelo Franco recently reported on a particular building's air conditioning heaters that could have caused fires. The heaters were unlawfully hidden in the ceiling voids and were mounted, unenclosed, directly near flammable materials. This was literally a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.

Business Intelligence

Finally, energy audits can reveal historical production information as well. Modern, electronic electricity meters for larger facilities now actually radio energy data back to the energy supplier, continually on a half-hourly basis 24/7 (there are no more meter readers). The energy auditor can access this valuable information in the form of an excel spreadsheet file and can produce energy consumption graphs from this data for any day in the past, or for any hour of any day in the past.

This intelligence information can reveal the exact production capacity at which a business was operating at any day, or any hour of any day, up to two years ago.

Case study: During a recent energy audit of a manufacturer in NSW, the energy auditor produced daily energy consumption graphs showing that, during some weekends, the whole plant was operating at production capacities that were well under the CEO's instructions.

Management liked the energy and maintenance savings identified by the energy audit, but they were even more interested in the coincidental information on production intelligence, which they thought was a very welcome bonus thrown in. The intermittent monitoring of energy graphs appears to have added a whole new dimension to the subject of internal business intelligence.