Is your Building Management System REALLY saving energy?
Or Is it just a glorified time clock?
At one of London’s most iconic properties, The Royal Exchange has a typical (BMS) Building Management System, as do many of the larger commercial properties. Typically they are controlling plant run times via a time schedule and on agreed set points.
Nothing new there!
Building Management Systems are good at what they do, but only if they are managed and time and set-point reviewed regularly. Some BMS maintenance regimens are carried out monthly and we would hope the engineer that visits site on a monthly basis has the knowledge to make sure the plant run times are correct as required for the occupancy of the building and that the set points are as energy efficient as required.
Most of the time these are just set and left forever to just chug along and waste energy. Additionally very few sites are remotely connected. Additionally its common for engineers to often leave the equipment in hand mode. In other words operating continuously.
Let’s look at example energy costs for some generic HVAC plant and equipment
A 300 kw Chiller cost approximately £80 an hour to run (dependent on various factors)
A 200 kw Boiler cost approximately £16 an hour to run (dependent on various factors)
A 200 kw HWS Cylinder cost approximately £16 an hour to run (dependent on various factors)
The Royal Exchange Business Case
Because of concerns over the high energy use, EnviroLogik were invited to look into what could be done to provide energy reductions at the Royal Exchange
At The Royal Exchange we found that the Chillers, Boilers and HWS Cylinder were running from 04.00am to 21.00pm every week day.
The actual plant run schedules requested by the management company were 06.00 to 19.00.
ALL Plant was running for four hours longer than required.
The combined cost to run the plant for those additional hours is £448.00 per day
Weekly Cost is £2,240.00 per week, Annual cost is £116,480.00 per year.
The Solution
Enviro-Logik installed several IoT non-intrusive battery powered temperature sensors onto the flow pipework of the Boilers, Chillers and HWS Cylinders.
Access to the BMS was granted to the BMS and they set up the correct time and set point parameters as agreed by the management company.
When any of the plant went out of the set parameters an email alert was sent to notify the property manager of the issue, who then instructed his engineer to make the relevant alterations.
They also send out an automatic daily status reports to let the customer know all plant is working within its agree parameters.
Outcome and Return on Investment
EnviroLogik completed the Installation of their IoT remote monitoring system with alerting facility onto 2 chillers, 3 boilers and 2 HWS cylinders.
The Hardware supplied, installed, commissioned and first 12 month subscription fee £1,780.00
Continuing 12 month subscription after initial inclusive 12 months £480.00 PA
Cost saving and ROI even if it was 50% of the above figures would be 2 weeks.
Benefits
- Energy costs saving
- Early warning alerts for major plant and equipment failure
- Overview of BMS and controls, actually working to agreed parameters
- Pre-warning of main plant issues before tenants complain
Future Options under consideration
- Remote monitoring and access to the BMS via the EnviroLogik IoT platform.
- Remote Switching off/on of any electrical item that is running at unusual times.
Get in contact if you would like to discuss any of our energy reduction strategies chris@enviro-logik.co.uk or call us on 0203 916 5158
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