Baseline Description: Status Quo
Baseline Energy Use: 17.3 kWh per year per square foot

For a retrofit application, the baseline is the status quo. For control at the plug level, the baseline varies tremendously due to what is plugged in to a wall outlet and the reliance on users to turn equipment on and off.

For medium sized buildings, the Cadmus "Northwest Commercial Building Stock Assessment" shows an average commercial building electrical energy use index (EUI) of 17.3 kWh/sf/year.  It is assumed that the EMCS will control both heating and cooling plus indoor and outdoor lighting, which represents the bulk of the total building energy use.

"Typical" Savings: 10%
Savings Range: From 5% to 18%

How much a facility will save from an enhanced automation upgrade depends upon the current level of control and which upgrades might be appropriate for a given facility.  Most systems control HVAC and lighting, and many different control strategies may be employed.  TXU Energy estimates that building automation systems save between 5% and 15% of overall building energy consumption.  They note that older or poorly maintained buildings can benefit greatly, sometimes yielding savings of over 30%(TXU Energy, 2013).

"Typical" Savings: 10%
Low and High Energy Savings: 10% to 55%
Energy Savings Reliability: 3 - Limited Assessment

Comments:

BC Hydro recently completed a demonstration of the Ecobee smart thermostat and the ThinkEco Modlet smart plug. These products can be used in residential and small business settings and wirelessly connect with a users PC or mobile device. The Ecobee smart thermostats cost $411 per unit and were used to control baseboard heating, an overhead radiant-tube heating systsm, and space heating in a shared lunchroom.

The Ecobee thermostats resulted in a savings of 55%, valued at $3,300 per year for electricity and natural gas combined. The simple payback was only 0.7 year. The Modlets connect to a web portal that allows the user to view energy consumption in real time and to either schedule or manually turn devices and appliances on and off. This simple technology, that plugs directly into wall outlets, allows users to monitor energy use, prevent vampire power drains, and generally reduce the overall costs to run electronic devices. Cost is about $350 for a "starter kit" consisting of 5 smart plugs.

The small cabinet shop used two starter kits and produced a plug load savings of 2,800 kWh/year, equivalent to a 44% reduction in plug load valued at $250 per year. Almost all of the Modlet savings was obtained from control of five under-desk space heaters. Mechanical tools tended to have on/off switches, and phantom loads were often so low (7 W) that the annual savings of 42 kWh ($3.69) didn't justify Modlet use. BC Hydro recommends that Smart Plugs only be used for high plug load devices such as space heaters or window-mounted air conditioners that draw several hundred to 1,000 Watts.BC Hydro conducted field tests of the ThinkEco Modlet and achieved energy savings of 44% during the winter period---equivalent to 280 kWh per smart plug deployed. Savings dropped to 14% in the summer. These savings might not be typical as, in this cabinet shop environment, protable space heaters were plugged into many of the wall outlets. These units had been historically left on at night, so energy savings from space heater control were impressive.

The Cadmus study indicates that small and mid-sized buildings make up about 52% of the regional commercial building floor space of 2,704 million sf (Page 2 and Figure 9, page 19).  (2,704 x 0.52 = 1,400 million sf). ( NEEA, 12/21/2009) The report also notes that 37% of the buildings already have energy management and control systems (EMCS) with another 33% of commercial buildings already using programmable thermostats (From Tables C-DC1 and C-DC2).  The target for this low-cost energy management and control systems technology is the 30% of commercial building space that is operating absent controls.  The "controllable" square footage is thus 0.3 x 1,400 million sf = 420,000,000 sf. 

Installed first cost per: square foot
Emerging Technology Unit Cost (Equipment Only): $0.09
Emerging Technology Installation Cost (Labor, Disposal, Etc.): $0.00
Baseline Technology Unit Cost (Equipment Only): $0.00

Comments:

The cost will vary depending on the extent of monitoring required, but should be within a predictable range based on building size. The installed cost and energy savings will both increase with building size; the larger the building, the greater the savings. Installation will be more costly in retrofits than in new construction. For simple, single zone packaged systems, the cost should be in the range of $500 to $1,500. For more complicated system the cost would increase by about $200-$400 per zone.  It will be assumed that our baseline mid-sized 40,000 ft-2 building consists of four floors with ten zones.  Total installed equipment cost is about $1,000 plus 9 x $300 = $3,700 installed (or $0.0925/sf). 

For energy management at the plug level, BC Hydro conducted a study under which 10 ThinkEco Modlets were installed for plug load management. Purchase and shipping costs were $709.99 for the ten units. Actual installation was easy (taking one hour for the ten Modlets) as the devices plug into standard wall outlets but have circuitry that monitors power consumption as well as executes schedules for turning each socket on and off. The Modlets connected with a local computer via a USB Key and a Zigbee mesh-network. For each Modlet, the user must enter the name of the connected appliances with the type of appliance selected from a drop down list. Connection configuration was problematic as modlets tended to not stay connected all of the time. About 14 hours of time was required to debug and connect the ten Modlets. Once the system was up and running, the Modlet scheduling worked as advertised. BC Hydro concluded that it takes a devoted energy-saver to persevere with this product. (Note: the installation costs shown above represent 1.4 hours of time at $40/hour).

Cost Effectiveness:

Simple payback, new construction (years): 0.6

Simple payback, retrofit (years): 0.6

In most cases, with reasonable utility rates (more than $0.08/kWh), a three-year pay back is reasonable.

No information available.

Comments:

Like most control products, EMCS will last for a number of years before they need to be upgraded. However, some systems may be better than others at maintaining energy savings over a 5- to 10-year timeframe, despite changes in maintenance personnel and upgrades in electronic products.