Whole-building energy monitoring tracks whole building energy consumption and compares usage against a comparative Energy Star® buildings, previous utility bills, peer buildings, or energy reduction targets.
A whole-building energy efficiency metering solution measures and reports energy use to a client site or a software as a service company. The software can provide a view of energy use across building(s) and assist managers to target the right buildings within a portfolio for efficiency studies based upon projected opportunities for savings. (It is not unusual for 30% of the buildings in a portfolio to account for 70% of the efficiency opportunities). These monitoring systems can also stores historical data and reports of electrical consumption and demand, and track when peak demand thresholds are being reached (so that demand charges can be controlled). A good software package is capable of engaging customers and converting energy assessments into real projects.
The software tool's energy analysis module can present data in a wide variety of graphs, tables, and reports and convert consumption into monetary units. Trending and savings verification features may be desirable for some customers. Advanced capabilities include use of single and multi-variant regression analyses and CUSUM. Some metered data may be displayed directly while other data may be converted into efficiency metrics or aggregated.
Whole building energy monitoring can be integrated with energy management and control systems, such as lighting and HVAC sensors, many of which can transmit data wirelessly. Some metering and analytic software vendors claim energy savings "up to 30%". In addition, savings due to building commissioning have been shown to degrade over time unless monitoring-based commissioning is implemented--then the savings are shown to persist.
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Baseline Description: Unmanaged commercial building Baseline Energy Use: 16.7 kWh per year per square foot
Taken from 2007 CBSA (http://neea.org/docs/reports/2009NorthwestCommercialBuildingStockAssessment021CA220F212.pdf?sfvrsn=10). Used overall average of all commercial buildings, since any of them can use integrated design.
"Typical" Savings: 15% Savings Range: From 10% to 30%
Note that the whole building energy monitoring itself does not provide energy savings. Monitoring can increase awareness of energy use and costs and result in behavior changes. Some software packages can actually create a building energy model that can be useful in identifying and quantifying energy savings opportunities while the monitoring reports can be useful in selling cost-effective projects to management. Monitoring systems can also be used for savings verification purposes.
"Typical" Savings: 10% Low and High Energy Savings: 5% to 15% Energy Savings Reliability: 2 - Concept validated
Energy monitoring by itself does not save energy, but beginning to monitor suggests a new awareness of energy use, and energy usage awareness alone should produce some savings. A new commitment to energy savings will produce much more aggressive results. An automated system will be much easier to keep up with and is therefore more likely to produce sustained results than a manual system. Whole building energy monitoring can often save 5% to 15% when coupled with building energy automation equipment that controls lighting and HVAC equipment.
Energy Use of an Emerging Technology is based upon the following algorithm. Baseline Energy Use - (Baseline Energy Use * Best Estimate of Energy Savings (either Typical savings OR the high range of savings.))
Simple payback, new construction (years): N/A
Simple payback, retrofit (years): N/A
Cost Effectiveness is calculated using baseline energy use, best estimate of typical energy savings, and first cost. It does not account for factors such as impacts on O&M costs (which could be significant if product life is greatly extended) or savings of non-electric fuels such as natural gas. Actual overall cost effectiveness could be significantly different based on these other factors.
LBL, 2013. Building Energy Information Systems and Energy Monitoring Tools Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
PIER, 05/11/2011. Savings Persist with Monitoring-Based Commissioning Public Interest Energy Research Program
South Africa Department of Energy, 03/31/2005. Module 7: Energy Monitoring, Targeting & Reporting South Africa Department of Energy
PA Consulting Group, 03/31/2010. Residential Smart Energy Monitoring Pilot Final Report PA Consulting Group
Technical Advisory Group: 2011 Energy Management TAG (#4) TAG Ranking: 30 out of 59 Average TAG Rating: 2.3 out of 5 TAG Ranking Date: 09/29/2011 TAG Rating Commentary: This should be combined with some of the other items. I am not sure where the generation is coming from? I think this measure can be combined with other whole building monitoring approach as a modular "energy information system" approach. HOW will someone act on this data? Data does not translate into savings. Do you mean megawatts consumed?