IGX

Patrick Goddard doesn't like energy audits. For him, as director of facilities for the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, an audit means a day spent walking around one of 22 buildings owned by the town, peering at insulation on windows and finding the keys to the HVAC room.

Worse, auditors "don't understand how the buildings operate," Goddard complains. "They see it at one point in time and do an analysis on what they see." Usually, their report comes back weeks later recommending more equipment, new windows, or more insulation.

So when a Lexington resident named Swapnil Shah approached Goddard at a meeting of the town energy committee and asked if the town was interested in a "virtual" audit, Goddard said yes.

He gave Shah a year's worth of data from the electricity meter of a town building. A few hours later, Shah sent Goddard a report showing that the building seemed to be using nearly as much energy after hours as during the day, suggesting it wasn't getting shut down properly. Eventually, Shah examined seven of Lexington's buildings and discovered problems that an auditor might have missed—for example, that the library's heating system was powering up at 4 a.m., hours before staff arrived in the mornings.

It was "absolutely better" than an on-the-ground audit, says Goddard, who expects simple efficiency fixes to save him $90,000, or about 3 percent of his annual operating budget.

Alfred_E._Neuman wrote:The government rarely grasps the concept of "lowest hanging fruit". Of course their solution to an energy audit is to look at the building and see what can be remodeled/renovated/updated/upgraded. It gives them a way to spend more money and justify their job.

But he cheapest energy is the energy you don't have to buy in the first place. And reducing a building's consumption to the bare minimum in off hours should be a no brainer. Then use that savings to go after the next lowest hanging fruit - windows/doors and insulation. Then use that savings to go to the next rung up the ladder. Pretty soon you've got the greenest building possible and it didn't cost a dime over your original operating budget.

It's almost too smart for a government to implement.

climber511 wrote:I know its good to "lower" the climate control during off hours but how much should you lower things before it takes as much to reheat - recool before you haven't accomplished anything. I know it will vary but maybe one of you know enough about this stuff to give me a guesstimate of sorts?