Building Energy Intelligence

Does your building need a lifestyle coach ?

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Personal Trainer Exercise (Photo credit: katieklimek)

Most buildings have the energy characteristics of a coach potato... They are not "fit for purpose". They consume far too much for their level of activity, lack discipline and motivation to even aspire to higher performance; and worse, they have no idea what they look like.

Many readers who are hard-nosed engineers may read this gruesome metaphor and feel uncomfortable with it. But (I make no apology) it is why most buildings need a lifestyle-coach or personal-trainer, even if they would choose a better job-title. So you know why you feel uncomfortable - Lets have a look at a quotation from :

Everydayhealth.com : The Benefits of a Personal Trainer..

If you're having a hard time getting motivated at the health club, or just don't feel like you're getting enough out of your exercise routine, consider hiring a personal trainer. More than just an instructor, a personal trainer can help you come up with the right workout plan to meet your goals. Whether it's losing a few pounds, toning up your... read more

Ok - if you ignore the "touchy feely" elements it doesn't sound so bad.

Our role at kWIQly is only to provide tools (very much like a sports hall, or fitness equipment manufacturer), but we need to serve these to a receptive audience i.e. an energy manager who just like a trainer "can help you come up with the right workout plan to meet your goals. Whether it's ...."

The role includes bringing skills and exercises, schedules and regimes to bear on known problems to rebalance life-style but it is "conducted by engineers".

It starts with an obvious further metaphor with a weigh-in and a good look in a mirror - to acknowledge the possibly overwhelming areas of "performance enhancing opportunity". And it leads on to all sorts of performance monitoring diagnostics and remedial therapies..

Let's take a quick look at some "fitness" exercises that might establishing and maintaining on a regular basis might knock any building into shape:

Do we know what we are trying to achieve ?
A schedule of targets is an important start. Occupancy times, set-point temperatures i.e. the objectives.

Do we know what we need to overcome ?
Is the outside air condition known - the energy content is determined by temperature moisture content and to a lesser degree air pressure.

What is the basic control strategy ?
How much air must be delivered and in what condition, is it better to re-circulate air to retain heat or increase air-flow to enhance free-cooling?
What compensation strategy should be employed for delivered air - are we delivering air at a fixed temperature?
How should we compensate heating and cooling circuits - on a zone basis or directly where the core plant is?

What is the supply strategy?
Are we sequencing main plant effectively - so that it runs when it must and does not otherwise?

Are key control elements commissioned effectively?
Are we setting adequate dead-bands ? Are we using PID loops outside the proportional response range?

Is there a performance model ?
If we don't know how much we expect to consume, how can we ever know if we can do better !

So...

These are just a few questions that leap to mind - even before we look at whether or not plant should be upgraded. In reality if we upgrade plant before checking the basics, there is no way of knowing what it will take to do the job, or how much an upgrade can usefully deliver.

Finally, we need to acknowledge that buildings left to their own devices are like a coach potato - they will slip back into their old ways and that is exactly why they need a personal trainer.. to help you come up with the right workout plan to meet your goals!

Join our circle on Google Plus - You will be welcome !

You spent HOW much - the joy of waste !

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:54:00 +0000

The Run Amok PAD May 8 (Photo credit: AlishaV)

There is a fine balance in any organisation between stifling the life out of people, or letting them run amok.

In one case nobody dares do anything and nothing ever gets done, in the other everyone does whatever they want and there is no rhyme or reason to it all.

Personally, I could not live with the first, but can also see problems with the second

BTW: What's it like where you work ?

However, the point of this post is one where it appears to me the whole world is running amok.

Here is a little list of things that almost all companies keep a tight watch on...

How long you are there.
How much you spend on their behalf.
What authority you have to spend money for them.
How good the results are from the money you spend.
What the intended purpose is for the things that you do.

Now if you happen to have a boss who is a complete pain, and you score him (or her) out of ten for each of the above, you will probably find that they score about 50 !

However, if you asked how innovative and fun to work with they are they may score a little less. These are people who need A quick tip about interfacing with other people

But here is a secret - There is one thing you can do in almost any company in the world and it is more significant than all of the above, and frankly nobody gives a hoot - talking of which feel free to Follow @kWIQly

You can walk into the cupboard under the stairs, flip the light switch on, walk out and close the door. No it is not environmentally friendly; far from it but, look how it parallels the list above...

No one knows how long its left on
No one knows how much it costs
Everyone has authority to do it
There are no good results from the action
There is absolutely no point in it.

So wasting energy (and you can do the same by moving thermostats) is unnoticed, expensive, allowed, offers no benefits and is entirely unintended.

So why don't companies have any policy on this ? - the world is running amok!

If you think I am completely bampots (english phrase) ranting on about this so-be-it, but if you think I have a point - do us all a favour (english spelling)

Talk about it (you can even comment if you wish),

maybe "like the article",

go and switch a light off - and then look smugly at your co-workers,

or just do something about it of your own device - use your imagination, have some fun and persuade some people to take some action.

Because if we don't the boring, pain-in-the-butt do nothing and bury-your-head-in-the-sand grey managers will have won after all !

And if that happens ... No Beers ! Which is why there is kWIQly

Does your building have its hands in its' pockets ?

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

The North Face of the Eiger gets cold !

I was walking along the road in Niederried the other day, looking up towards the Jungfrau range.

I was not as warm as I guess Ueli Steck must have been during his astonishing Record solo climb - in 2 hours 47 minutes - up the North Face of the 13,000-plus-foot Eiger

So I did the sensible thing and put my hands in my pockets, sensible to me because it meant my hands could not sense the bitter -12C wind that has been blowing in from Siberia.

I had gone for a walk to mull over how best to explain the problems with Building Management Systems or Control Systems in general that arise from poorly commissioned temperature sensors.

I had one of those Eureka moments! So when Archimedes had his, he was sitting in his bath and jumped out and run down the street, by contrast I had a lot more clothes on, proving that on this occasion I was as wise as a Greek Philosopher.

How do you explain to someone that a weather sensor for building controls should be a long way from the building, over grass and 2 metres off the ground etc Stevenson_screen siting ?

Well - If I walk along with my hands in my pockets I can feel ... How warm my pockets are! This has very little to do with how much heat my body must generate to stay warm because of the cold air it is "bathed" in. To define the air temperature a building is exposed to you need to try to measure how hot or cold it would be "if the building weren't there".

This is how you measure the temperature of a swimming pool - you don't stick a thermometer in your bathing suit - because they are way too hot !

The way of telling whether a temperature sensor is reading the right value, is not only to calibrate it in a block but far more important is where you place it, and this requires independent weather data.

We will soon be releasing a service at kwiqly whereby you upload a .csv file of external temperature readings into your browser and we evaluate any problems that you may have using high quality weather data.

So if interested please let us know using our Contact form - Thanks for reading!

Green flagship - a plan for disaster

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:46:00 +0000

Centre-of-excellence or silliness ex-centre ?

Here's how it often starts ...

The political elite of a faceless corporation gather round the table and say..."We need to spin some good news and we need it fast" - "So how do we do it?"

A few blank faces look down but no blank cheques are offered. The plan is to cook up some nonsense that sounds good, ideally looks good for long enough and costs very little indeed. In other words a Green Centre of Excellence is a great place to tell some tall-tales.

This may one-day divert attention from the hideous environmental super-whoopsie that "faceless corporation" knows some gutter-scraping journalists probably intend to pass off as corporate irresponsibility.

So to have a timely fluff piece held up their sleeve is nothing if not cheap insurance and jolly sound corporate governance to boot.

OK so maybe I am ladling the cynicisms rather heavily, and many of our clients are huge corporations - and many really do their best and invest in the process -

BUT, the "Corporate Centre of Excellence / Green Flagship" yarn is getting a little long in the tooth to be told as News. So I'm going to tell it my way...

They go wrong - ( without fail ? - comments welcome ) and this is why...

First of all as George Orwell showed in his parody of communism, there is equality and there is super-equality (where super means above not more). A flagship (until the rats leave) stays afloat, just as long as the admiral is on-board. Note - to lose the flag is as demotivating as it gets - followed by a guaranteed plummet in performance.

After the photo-call, press-conference and petite fours, the quick lick-of-paint soon flakes off as things get "thankfully back to normal" and the facility managers lets out a long sigh.

Next - consider that the budget to achieve magic at the Flagship had top-tier backing while it was "flavour of the day". Three years later, out in the trenches, the time, resources, motivation and even general competence that grow up around a relatively high budget exercise just don't exist.

Now if you run a gazillion outlets that are a nightmare to manage, an idea some bright spark will offer sounds like this ...

"Why don't we find out what works once-and-for-all here, and then if it does work we can roll it out far and wide"

is sadly inadequate. The outlets are different from the head Office - Why are Head offices always chosen for flagships I wonder - rhetorically

Oh and then there is corruption, mismanagement, misappropriation and general "I don't give a ...." to contend with.

Bottom line - flagship "centres of excellence" sink to the bottom (for exactly the same reasons as they are suggested - expedience), but may in the interim temporarily surpass the flotsam of business as usual, at least long enough to spin out a good press release.

The alternative - Good engineering, intentionality, long-term benefits, better comfort and performance. And a corporate culture that is built on rock rather than whimsy!

Talk to your engineers, find out what they need, challenge them, decide, deliver AND FOLLOW THROUGH !

Energy Manager - Poacher or GameKeeper

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:02:00 +0000

Building Management Systems
Poacher or GameKeeper - who will police the police ?

- It's is a well known question, so let's apply it to looking after the greatest asset of all - our environment.

The answer as always boils down to simple ideas of trust, independence, integrity and local knowledge. Let's look at these in turn, in the context of Building Management Systems ( BMS ) or Building Control Systems ( BCS )...

Trust

Effective Policing relies on trust

BMS are like policemen : - not 100% reliable, and they will sometimes fail, and they are responsible for keeping behaviour of very un-intelligent things under control - that is the plant that determines both the comfort in a building, and the cost of achieving that comfort. In short they cannot be trusted not to waste energy, so an external mechanism or "energy audit" function is needed.

Independence
Any audit function, must be above corruption, whether by "bent coppers", "fraudulent financiers" or "flawed intelligence".

It is the last that concerns us - because of the Garbage In Garbage Out principal, if we use a BMS to audit the control of a BMS we are hopelessly lost.

It is like trying to measure your waistline with an elastic tape-measure - you will see what you want to see.

Integrity
Here we are not talking about a control system of 'good character' - we mean by this that a complete or integrated picture is required.

To contend that say a boiler is well-controlled in absence of occupancy schedules or weather conditions is a nonsense.

Local Knowledge

Every copper must "know his beat" - who are the "usual suspects".

Two identical buildings are not alike in every respect.

They may be identical internally, but be used for different purposes or at different occupancy levels.
They may be constructed identically, but one is in the lee of a building and the other on the shore of the sea.
They may have different shading characteristics, maintenance programmes, and a million other variables.

Conclusion

Any method of assessment to control wasted energy, must have the above conditions satisfied. This means local independent weather data, independent verifiable consumption data, and local building use context. We can help !

What do you mean - a gas valve IS a thermometer ?

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:42:00 +0000

In my last post How cold is it in Europe ? noted that we allow people to freeze to dead in the cold, while we happily waste energy and this is a thermometer of our humanity.

I also said that a gas valve is a thermometer for a geographic region, and it's been suggested I expand on this a little - (It sounds a little weird after all).

OK - So we can see - in this snapshot from the kWIQly Free Weather Service that the USA leads the world with 2806 weather stations (in the NOAA list ) , while Columbia has 47 and Guadeloupe has 1.

Energy use is related to wealth with citizens of Bangadesh in Asia using around twice their own weight in Oil per year, whereas Americans (ie USA not North America as a whole) use 77 times their body weight of oil.

To put this in context a strong Bangladeshi can carry all the energy he uses in a year on his back in the form of oil by making two or three trips.

An average American would need more than four trips in a HumVee to carry his oil !

source Wikipedia : Energy Use by Capita

So - we are all used to criticizing excessive American energy use, but where it is cold or hot the figures are more astounding. In Iceland we are talking nearly 50% more than the US (for the planet it is a good thing not may people live in Iceland !) - Note: I liked every Icelander I have met so far !

So imagine each person has a fuel supply (like the gas valve I mentioned) - if they are poor they use less over all, but rich or poor when people need heating (or cooling) they use more.

In this sense the rate you use energy represents your local weather conditions, and your wealth. You may be always efficient like the third world, or always demanding , but in either case your rate of energy use (the position of your personal gas valve) is a thermometer for your weather.

At kWIQly we use recorded consumption rates (Smart Meters) and Weather Data to analyse how your energy use can be reduced - (without sacrificing comfort).

How cold is it in Europe ?

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:32:00 +0000

OK - As I write this in the Alps in Switzerland it is very cold, with high fatalities in Eastern Europe.

Warning : picture below is not suitable for children !

http://www.fuel-poverty.org/ Support if you can whether directly or indirectly.

But I want to ask what the question really means... Cold is a notion of discomfort. below a certain (personal) preference temperature we are cold. As it gets colder we react by wearing more clothes, and our buildings react by using more heating fuel.

But above this temperature (when we are hot), lowering the temperature makes us less hot rather than more cold. This temperature is known as the "balance-point temperature"

It is important for managing energy because it allows an energy manager to convert weather conditions into demand for heating. We calculate degree-days of heating and cooling demand free for users all over the world but we are no charity - which is why this post draws attention (whether you read it now or in summer ) to people who do attempt to make a difference.

But we are discussing "what does cold mean?" and surprising the answer is that it is ONLY measured by phenomena. So mercury expands giving us a thermometer, water freezes and boilers (defining another thermometer) and so on.

These phenomena are necessarily local (where the thermometer is), but we are working on defining a distributed thermometer. If when it gets cold more gas is burnt, (automatically so it is objective), by measuring gas use in a region, you get a thermometer for that region. (The gas valve opens and closes just as mercury expands or contracts in a much smaller space). The advantage of this "thermometer" is it representscold weighted by economic activity and people, and sadly at this time deaths.

So the rate of death due to cold, is no laughing matter (think before you claim you are "freezing to death" ), but it is a thermometer that correlates to all of energy use, weather conditions, and housing standards - but perhaps most it is a thermometer of our humanity - Why do we allow this ?

This picture is of death of a soldier on the Russian Finish Border

Today people are dying of cold in Europe while others waste energy.

It is time we took less for granted,

so these deaths are granted at least the dignity of some meaning.

http://www.fuel-poverty.org/ Support if you can whether directly or indirectly.

If you were simply looking for a comparison of how cold it is you can drill down from a global level to any weather station here http://kwiqly.com/intl/en/countries/NA

Dead Belgians and Energy Managers

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 03:45:00 +0000

A dead Belgian surrealist painter has much in common with the aims of an energy manager.

When René Magritte, famously wrote –

“This is not a pipe”

he challenged perceptions of reality.

To challenge perception is the main job of an energy manager.

We can imagine all the worlds smokestacks

with the words - “Ceci n'est pas necessaire”.

“This is not necessary”

The absence of an exclamation mark is because this is not challenging – in fact it is a massive understatement.

Not only is waste not necessary, it must stop – now !

We should not ask challenging questions, but challenge through action.

The energy manager has the role (is paid to) disrupt pre-conceptions with a passion.

So instead of asking -

Can I switch it off ? - Just Do it !

Test the fundamental hypothesis that you are in charge of energy - or get your ass kicked ! The bigger failure is the failure to find out !

There are very, very few comfort processes that cannot be investigated actively like this.

I grant the exceptions of the operating theatre, and so on where caution is required - so no getting lawyered-up because we are all liable – so deal with it, get used to it , Embrace it !

To say to yourself “Can I turn it off ?” is a submissive question – and dumb...

To ask “can I ? ” – unlike “may I, goes as far as to assume we are incapable of action before going on to concede authority. So with that simple question – comes defeat, before action.

If this sounds too radical let's conduct a four step thought experiment ...

Go into a small house and turn the boiler or furnace off and watch what happens !
When you get bored ask for a cup of coffee.
For most of the year the owners will not notice "coldness" for several hours – or days !
Once owners ask what you are doing (sitting there doing nothing) tell them that your job is to find how long it is viable to do nothing while being paid for it – BECAUSE that is what the energy they were spending until now had been doing !

So the job of the energy manager is to prove the boundaries - and note that to prove means to test, not to theorize about them.

This idea can be applied even more effectively in big buildings.

Firstly people often do not know that heating or cooling is on in the first place.
Secondly larger buildings may have greater thermal mass and can hold their heat for days rather than minutes.

Finally, when you have tested the situation under today's conditions, go ahead and find out what happens under all conditions, at all times of day and night.

Energy Saving - 5 Obvious Measures

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:02:00 +0000

The shocking thing about climate change is how easy and inexpensive it could be to do a lot to reduce energy waste. Here are some really simple ideas - maybe you can add some suggestions in the comments.

Regulation that all buildings must publish a policy for inside temperature conditions and may not define a "dead-band" of less than 3C or 5.5F. A dead-band is the range where the temperature is deemed both hot enough and cold enough. Narrow dead-bands cause over-controlling (like a learner driver in a stick-shift car). In reality aiming to maintain a 0 Degree dead-band can (and often does waste a lot of energy) !

Require that all buildings that provide comfort or server-cooling publish the outside temperature at which they will rely on free cooling (i.e. ventilation with free cold air). Companies with silly policies could then be named and shamed (about 95% of office blocks in London are in this category).

In forced ventilation buildings ensure an interlock between fan-power and heating / cooling functions - If windows are opened building services are disabled !

Ask every energy manager in the world to write down a schedule of occupancy hours and post it on a public web-site. Until senior management agree it, or correct it - everyone can go home on full-pay. (Most energy managers are not given clear objectives).

Ensure that energy consumption for every public building is made publicly available, for criticism, comment and analysis.

Please add your answers below and have a look at what is happening in the US with the Green Button Initiative - We could do with some of that in Europe.

Energy Manager are human too

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:55:00 +0000

My job is not to manage energy (thankfully)

Why "thankfully" ? - because the role of an energy manager is fundamentally thankless...

An accurate one-line job description of an energy manager is "to do more with less";
Then if our energy manager succeeds in this first objective then their second task is by default ... "to do more with less"
And so on until they can achieve no more.

Under these rules, fail they must, so we do need a way to differentiate a "high performance failure" from a "hopeless failure" and to reward it.

Notice that if bank managers were employed this way (maybe it would benefit society :) our bank charges and interest rates would would fall each year, bank clerks would drive smaller and smaller cars each year. After a period of a few years they would be routinely replaced, and there would be no planned career progression for a bank teller, because you can't really get much better at counting once you have the basics, and so time in service is the only "achievement".

We need another way of looking at this job of energy management...

If we said,

"we will set you a clear set of objectives that we expect you to meet",
"if you meet these objectives you will be receive praise" and
"if you can show us that you can exceed them for an acceptable cost, we will fund it and provide you with the resources necessary, and possibly even a promotion to a supervisory position"

DO NOT make the mistake of thinking that energy managers are in lowly positions, some are accountable for millions of expenditure (and it's rising) and as non-core business overheads it comes straight off the bottom line.

If we set ourselves these goals, we might find ourselves employing highly motivated, professional energy managers. Remember that the task we are setting has a larger role - save energy, make us profitable, save the climate, serve our grandchildren: if we do not - they will have us to blame!

What can we expect ?

So I think the problem is not that we expect too much of energy managers, it is rather that we expect the wrong things. This motivates me to define a set of disciplines that we should reasonably expect to be managed.

Arising as part of these procedural goals there are a huge number of administrative tasks, that can be delivered effectively or not. An interesting question is to see how well our industry supports these tasks. The answer to that question will ultimately be decided by the energy managers, that buy the appropriate solutions.

So appearing below, will be a growing list of functionalities and discussions , that we believe are needed generically by energy managers to satisfy their needs and get their jobs done.(this is a rolling work, so "marker" topic links will be provided where work is in draft). Ideally this can build into a framework of solutions.

Energy managers are human too

Note that the needs of an energy manager are no different from any other employee. They have social, emotional and functional needs. From my experience these are simply:

To know what is required of them
To have the tools to deliver what is required effectively
To be provided with mechanisms that their efforts are acknowledged by their peers and management

However, the role of energy manager is "new" (although gathering winter fuel has been sung about for centuries Good King Wenceslas), and it is not "core-business" for most organisations; so it is necessary for many energy managers to be self-starters. This means that they may have to take initiative as follows:

This is what you should expect of me - to which I may be held accountable
These are the tools I need and what they will cost - I understand how to use them effectively
This is how you will know if I am doing a good job - It is an objective measure

In our experience very few energy managers get so far as to adequately define the first of these, this may be a problem of the employer or employee, but it exists.

As with any employee, their most valuable asset is the one that cannot be replaced - their time. So the acid test will be, "If I have to get this job done - is this the tool I would choose for the task?". In our experience there is a premium where the answer to this is yes. So whoever, can get a set of affirmative answers to these question, may enjoy a long-haul profitable business model - Disclosure: we declare ourselves in the running!

Tools for Energy Managers

Grimm (sic.) News for Energy Management

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:35:00 +0000

The best fairy tales are often allegories that warn of what can happen.

An allegory (Latin "veiled language, figurative") is a form of extended metaphor.

So a fairytale often illustrates a moral compass or warning, where a "big bad wolf" might represent an evil force... It should not surprise us then if we see powers of good and evil, live and die as though they were bit players in a fairytale.

We might write a fairytale of our own - So perhaps we might write "As White as Snow" - if we tried to describe the energy industry as being a metaphorical drug dealer in a tale of seven scenes.

There was the time when energy was a luxury - Early 20th Century and prior
Then it popped up out of the ground almost wherever you looked - Oil Barons
Then energy became more obviously scarce - Several waves
Brands arose - Everyone knows the dealers
It became so much cheaper - almost everyone got hooked up
Designer energy became pretty cool - NOW
Then came withdrawal

If the metaphor fits, then arguably the outcome of the allegory might serve as a taste of things to come... a warning - our new BFF may actually be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

A search through allegorical fairytales about greed and addiction - will warn us that as a society addicted to a substance, that does us little good, the future may be uncomfortable.

Psychrometry WTF? #2 - Absolute Humidty

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:56:00 +0000

This is the second post in our
Psychrometry wtf ! - "without the fear" series

This post is about "wetness" - which is otherwise known as humidity. Air can be bone dry. Or not.

To recap the first post Dry Bulb Temperature is summarised very simply as follows: As we move from left to right it gets hotter

Click to Enlarge

Summer = Hot = Right Side of graph
Winter = cold = left side of graph

Now onto wetness. How wet is wet air and how dry is dry air?

Suppose for every bit of air we had a bit of water - would that make it 50% wet ? - As a humidity ratio it would depend how we measured.

If we take a subject close to my heart - so close in fact that we need to show a picture... - You might imagine Simon Theakston offering you a pint of Theakstons Old Peculiar (well I did say that I would try to make this as painless as possible).

http://www.beer-pages.com/stories/theakston.htm

Now that the beer has reverted back to family ownership the beer has been made more peculiar yet - it is 3.8% Alcohol By Volume

That means that if you had a swimming pool full of it, the alcohol would fill up a paddling pool of 3.8% of the volume of the swimming pool.

That would be a silly thing to do, because actually it is best to drink it.

However, another way of saying how strong the beer was would be to discuss Alcohol By Weight. Since a volume of water weighs more than a similar volume of alcohol the ABW figure would be slightly less than the ABV value.

However, the crazy guys who do meteorology for a living decided to measure wetness of air in terms of Water in Air By Weight. There is a good reason for this - while water and alcohol are quite incompressible air can be squashed into a small space. If you try squashing Beer it makes the place you put it bigger - though it happens over years:)

So how wet is air - we talk in ratios = e.g 38 grams water per 1000 grams of air or 0.038

It is the absolute humidity ratio

If you click on the graph above you will see the horizontal blue lines are each marked with a certain wetness - with the amount increasing as you go up the chart.

So now we can think of the chart as follows (ignore all the other lines for now):

COLD & WET	HOT & WET - Google for images - Not Safe For Work !
COLD & DRY	HOT & DRY

The Green Button Initiative

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:43:00 +0000

kWIQly supports "The Green Button Initiative" as described at

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/11/21/empowering-customers-green-button

and calls on utility companies globally to implement it.

Further Information is available at http://www.greenbuttondata.org/

Psychrometry WTF? #1 - Dry-bulb temperature

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:49:00 +0000

OK - we have the "terrifying" psychrometric chart in all of its' glory.

Put it out of mind right now ! (click on it for a gory detail reminder if you must)

I have promised to explain

Psychrometry wtf-without-fear series
and make it crystal clear.

I am going to do this by playing with some simple ideas about household objects. These may also help you remember things.

We start off with the humble thermometer - these are not frightening - mothers and doctors stick them in the mouths (and elsewhere) of babies and sick people so they cannot be all that bad.

So here is a thermometer :

As it gets hotter the red liquid expands and moves up into a vacuum from the "bulb" or reserve at the bottom.

So the longer the red marker the hotter it is.

The bulb is important !

Generally if you stick your finger in your mouth so its wet, and then stick it in the air (no picture :) it will feel colder than if you stick it in the air while it is dry. However, if it is raining or foggy (very humid) it does not feel colder.

So how it feels depends on how wet it is.

Normal temperatures are taken with a "dry bulb" -
i.e. stick your finger in the air (not in your mouth).

I asked a friend of mine to demonstrate - but he said he gets fed up with them - so here is someone clearly chosen entirely at random doing it for you.

So even politicians know that summer is warm and winter is cold.

My argument is that if a politician can understand this issue you can.

All you need to know about the dry-bulb temperature and a psychrometic chart is that it gets hotter from left to right !

You can imagine the thermometer being laid on its side so the red line rises from left to right.

In this diagram you will see vertical green lines drawn from the bottom where they are marked with the dry-bulb temperature (how hot it is - rising left to right )

Click to Enlarge

A Declaration of War

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Today at KWIQly we declared war. A fight to help energy managers - the front line troops in the war against Climate Change.

If WWI and WWII were nominally World Wars, then surely Climate Change, which has already killed many more, is more insidious and is already projected to last for centuries will be remembered - by those that survive.

We can measure our success by two things:

each single kWhr that we help our clients save.
profitable economic survival to further criteria 1.

No doubt our strategies will need to evolve, but underpinning our very clear success criteria is a simple premise.

Energy is saved through a simple iterative process:

Evaluate what must be done
Examine means to achieve it
Deploy most effective alternative
Keep vigilant for performance deviation, emergent technology and changing need

I will be posting updates to this article - but for now I can announce that our initial position in terms of support of evaluation by energy managers of "what must be done" is as follows:

Position #1

Energy managers have a globally significant role, and to evaluate what must be done they should be provided the best tools possible.

The most significant driver of variation energy consumption in society is the external weather history in conjunction with diurnal building use (e.g. opening hours).

This is due to the requirement of buildings in their primary role - to isolate us from predominant external weather conditions.

Heating and Cooling degree-days ( HDD and CDD ) are the standard (though superficial) metric of "what must be done" for any building heating or cooling system.

For this reason kWIQly will make available to any energy manager world-wide ( from householder to enterprise facility manager ) without charge:

Convenient tools to administer a list of buildings of interest
Automated identification of suitable weather data sources
Acquisition of free-weather data specific to those locations
Automated calculations of degree-days for each site (to user stipulated parameters)
Simple graphical representation of the same.
A single-click download of this data.

The graphical representation and underlying data is available from Free degree day data

Explanation of Graphic :

The dark line represents hourly temperatures if zoomed out as shown here for three years are averaged over time
Red columns represent heating degree-days (calculated per day - visualized as period averages)
Blue columns represent cooling degree-days (calculated per day - visualized as period averages)

Degree-Day Weather Data - Convenient and Free

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:58:00 +0000

Finding Heating and Cooling Degree-Day data has never been easier. Pin buildings on a Map, we find the weather data, Free Degree-Days - click to graph, click to download. 45 seconds anywhere !

This free service is the start to a disruptive drive to make high quality energy management analysis available where it is needed - everywhere, every continent, every building.

An energy manager for a building has to measure performance. For heating and cooling the yardstick is heating degree-days ( HDD ) or cooling degree-days ( CDD ). Comparing Fuel consumption against load determined by weather is as fundamental as comparing miles-per-gallon for car economy.

1. Locate your buildings on a map
2. Select building and set balance temperature
3. See visualisation of load vs. weather 4. Click to download

Oh and by the time you need more data, we will be offering free on-line energy management reports too !

As an example - Here's a test preview of automated Pattern Recognition of Opening Hours and Base Load... The software has no idea of opening hours but deduces apparent activity from consumption patterns and weather data.

Give it a try - We want to see how much time and effort we can save you !

Did you ever laugh at a funeral - Here's why

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:51:00 +0000

Seth Godin writes a brilliant post today about our continual need for re-assurance and how it can be harmful and energy sapping. And I agree with it whole-heartedly - checking I have passport wallet and keys too many times as I leave for the airport:

The lizard brain seeks constant reassurance. It will wheedle and argue and debate with the rest of your head, pushing for one tiny bit of evidence, some sort of proof that everything will be okay.
Don't do it.When you indulge the lizard, it gains power. It doesn't walk away ashamed, humiliated at its anxiety. Instead, it merely sidesteps and looks for the next thing to worry about, because, ready for this? It's nice to be reassured.Developing the reassurance habit is easy to do and hard to kick. The problem is this: there are some ventures where no reassurance is possible.
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b31569e2014e89b97d7b970d

However, there are times when it can really pay off !

Obviously I am talking about cases where re-assurance is possible and where the probability of saving an "own goal" is high.

Decision making and "the lizard" interact negatively when gut instinct fear of the unknownis inappropriate, and I think there are patterns where this occurs most often.

When fear is misdirected and diverts attention from your priority. If you have big exam or a TED talk to give then "butterflies" are normal and should help you perform. But if they dominate they can exhibit themselves as "things I would prefer to think about" - checking you have performed your lucky routine (how many people have a ritual) is all about putting attention on something more comfortable and less stressful (did you aver laugh at a funeral or wake?).

The need for re-assurance is beneficial when it is directed at a threat. These are often real rather than merely perceived if :

They are in a domain where you are not expert ( Your company embraces Green-tech publicly but in reality is blowing hot air - you sell telephones - you know NOTHING about green-tech) - Your gut is giving you advice and saying "stop your Bullsh#t " Better that you get informed before getting called on it publicly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOtO6DvH1O8
They are in an area where problems are know to be rife http://www.facilitiesnet.com/hvac/article/5-Threats-to-Chiller-Efficiency--1893 - So how much do you know about chiller efficiency ? - Warning: if you are a company that runs chiller compressors 24/7/365 "because you have to" and you comment below - I will name and shame if I can !
They are in an area where problems emerge spontaneously and early identification is key - Good examples would be testicular or breast lumps (Warning following contain nudity in medical context)

http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/video/how-to-check-yourself/how-to-check-your-testicles/ (safe for work unless employer is an idiot)
http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/video/how-to-check-yourself/how-to-check-your-breasts/ (safe for work unless employer is an idiot)

In my experience energy efficiency problems emerge spontaneously and frequently, usually in domains where the sufferer is not expert, and early identification is key - so

http://kWIQly.com/ - is a great drop in clinic if you want your energy "lumps" looked at!

The conclusions I make are that Seth is absolutely right in most contexts, but in facilities management and energy management particularly and also health care (and politics) he may be dropping the ball ! But in politics it is an established norm :)

PS - Are you aware that you can get free heating and cooling degree-day data for anywhere in the world from us ?

How to Save Energy - When doing nothing is not an option

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:18:00 +0000

Doing nothing is one sure way to save energy !
This frog is as green as can be

Do Nothing ! - because when we do anything we use energy.

It's one way to save energy, but chances are that is not the answer you are looking for.

Certainly when people do ask us how to save energy we find that doing nothing is simply not an option.

I suppose if it were life would be far too easy :)

So to get our job done, we must make sure our clients are: using as little as possible to do no more than absolutely necessary. And that is as good a definition of energy management as you can find. So lets flag it up !

Energy Management Defined :

Using as little as possible to do no more than absolutely necessary.

All very well, but we need to put some flesh on the bones. In order to make things a little more real we need to look at the role of energy management. Notice that this means everyone - we all have responsibility and we should all remember it.

Energy managers, have a key and growing role, particularly because of climate change, and economic conditions insisting we should look after the bottom-line (or household budget).

There are many tools available to assist in the greening of our society, and clean-tech and green-tech investors are certainly always looking for new and better gadgets to ~~part us with our money~~ to save energy. This is simply because there are huge investment opportunities. However, when it comes to buildings there are a few important ideas that aren't going to go away soon. And they should be addressed first.

So "yes" - we need to know the best ways to " green it " - and one answer is green IT, where new tools are coming into existence that can really help, but first we have to ask where is the pain point. What is it that we have to address? - If we don't focus on a problem we'll get nowhere.

Fortunately, as a first approximation to finding energy savings we can "follow the money". If we consider how buildings come into being there is a five-step process.

Five Steps to Building - a disaster :

Architect - specifies conceptual vision
Building contractor - builds something that looks like it
Commissioning engineers - make it work somehow
Developer sells to purchaser
Energy efficiency - does not match conceptual vision

There is no secret to the fact that a lot of money flows up and down between the first four steps - and some of it is free of any hint of corruption (he wrote with tongue in cheek).

What is left is a problem - in that the actual operation of the building does not correspond to the theoretical specification (which may have won design awards, and all sorts of feel-good eco-labels in the process - Notice that eco-labelling is drawn to the money like moths to a gas-light).

But - That is not the problem - it's the problem that the money wants you to solve ! It argues that you need to spend more getting the first four steps right.

Follow the money !

How does it do this ?

It uses comparative benchmarking.

One thing about comparative benchmarking is that there is always a "best of class" - allowing some industry awards dinners, and there is always a "worst of class" - justifying spending much more.

So - What is the question we should be asking ?

If we put aside the question for the moment of what the building was meant to do - which is spilt milk - we can ask a much better question. What is it doing and what does it need to do? That question takes us back to our original question:

Are we using as little as possible to do no more than absolutely necessary?

When you are in a hole - rule #1 "STOP DIGGING"

Notice that this question absolutely ignores how we got into the mess we are in.

But the first rule of getting out of a mess is to stop ...

So - this is how we can wrap this post up for another occasion...

First Do Nothing ! - It won't cost much - So we can use the time to...

Take stock of the situation as it is
Look at what is really necessary (not what the architect thought ten years ago)
Formulate plans to move from doing what we are doing, to doing what needs to be done and then we can make sure we are doing what needs to be done for as little as possible.
et voilà - Energy Management

Naturally some of the detail is technical - but first we need to ask Do you love your children ?

If you enjoyed the article please give it a nudge to pay it forwards at the bottom of the page ...

PS - Are you aware that you can get free heating and cooling degree-day data for anywhere in the world from us ?

Reduce AC costs energy, carbon & money

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:08:00 +0000

AC (not to be confused with alternating-current), ie air-con or air-conditioning is a very simple idea.

A simple idea, but as important as the air that we breathe.

To be comfortable inside a building, depends on what you are doing and who you are, but some good generalisations are possible.

Four things are key: temperature, humidity, air-flow and quality.

The last of these can be put to one side for the purposes of energy management in a simple sentence - maintain the filters, and know what maximum and minimum flow rates for comfort are (some systems have quality sensors, but I'm not addressing that today as I covered air quality recently in the black art of air quality , and I think there are more opinions than ants at a picnic.

Air conditioning as a phrase is usually reserved for systems that influence both humidity and temperature, whereas simple air treatment often refers to temperature only.

So lets think about replacing air in a building.

If the air that leaves is in a worse state than the air that is coming in, ventilation even without any treatment is beneficial.

So for example if you are trying to cool the building and outside air at 25.5°C (77.9°F) and the air is leaving at 28.3°C (83°F) it is doing cooling for free - so you want as much of it as possible (until extract temperatures fall). So for economy, you should ventilate as a priority over active cooling.

On the other hand, if you are heating, and outside air is below extract temperature - you obviously want move as little air as possible (and recover any heat you can from what is leaving if you have heat wheels, run-around coils or cross-over plates).

The above statements are not strictly true - if you have the ability to detect enthalpy, it can be that cool wet air contains more energy than warmer wetter air. However, if you are using enthalpy control, it is important to be aware of the need to maintain humidity sensors (which are vulnerable to deterioration).

Free cooling is where you vent an unoccupied building at night when electricity may be cheaper and the cooling effect is greater, to mitigate a need to actively cool later. Given good weather forecasts (kWIQly can provide to anywhere on the planet), it can be worth actively cooling at night as cooling plant is more efficient - especially if you have cool storage - an ice store or similar. For monitoring performance good weather histories are essential - refer ventilation rates and degree-days.

Humidity control usually involves drying by cooling to below the dew point - the temperature given air conditions where moisture condenses on a cool surface (think glass of beer :), or humidifying using steam pack or similar.

Evaporative cooling is achieve by letting air evaporate from a pool - this increases relative humidity, so is both most effective and beneficial in dry climates. When viable it is much less energy intense than steam production to humidify or conventional compressor based cooling.

To save money - now is the time to do air conditioning repair maintenance (when AC repairs are cheapest ! )

Building Energy Management Systems Snakeoil

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:38:00 +0000

Either you are sick of hearing them by now or you are very, very, new to this game.

If the latter - good luck and get used to it - if the former, then lets start to get over it !

What ? I imagine you asking (rhetorically) so I answer - the following hopelessly hollow phrases..

Let's put the 'e' back into bms.
You can't manage what you can't measure.
Every building is different.
The cheapest kW is the one you never spend
Smart-XYZ
Self-Adaptive Learning Algorithm
Auto-tuning
Self-commissioning

You know why ? - because every building control system is inherently the same. And that is a huge problem for the people who make them and sell them.

Commodities they are, and the only differentiators are prices (which are falling), likelihood of going out of business (as many manufacturers do at alarming frequency), and the deliberate incompatibilities that are put in as booby-traps to snare the less knowledgeable buyer (think Internet Explorer iPhones and pretty much every closed protocol device)

So whether they are referred to as unitary controllers, nodes, programmable logic controllers, embedded supervisors, SCADA, etc etc it really doesn't matter - they are the same.

In essence they can take inputs in, process them according to some algorithm, put responses out and to be really esoteric they can communicate via "man-machine interfaces" aka screen/keyboard and via TCP/IP and a bunch of other protocols (unless you really buy a pooch). Beyond this they may have bits of network topology, data storage, protocol converters (why needed), routers and etc.

What did I just describe - well a smartphone can do all of that for under 99$ , so can arduino open source hardware and it costs peanuts in comparison with the black boxes sold by the controls industry, so can any computer. So the hardware is a sham.

What about analog sensors, (the phone has them and they cost virtually nothing), relays (oh yes every button on a keypad is a digital input).

No, in reality there is nothing to distinguish them from a hardware perspective. And remember just because a sensor can feed a 16-bit value along a comms network, if it is a thermometer it will tell you a very very precise temperature +/- a huge commissioning and field wiring error.

So if the hardware is the same, then the software must be different - nope.

Ladder Logic Diagram

Sure how you tell it what to do may be represented in a different "language" or via a different programming "paradigm", but what it does is it converts analog values into digital values and back again (ADC and DAC convertors), and in the middle bit it's all digital, so it does everything on the basis of sets of AND and OR gates (which many years ago was represented as "ladder logic" which was a visual analogy of a wiring circuit that related relays (digital states).

So where is the difference. Well sales technique counts for a lot (especially to the non-technical buyer), and then there are big words and euphemisms. So for example a BEMS is a euphemism for a BMS (a euphemy is simply the opposite of blasphemy - it literally means "speaking well")

Beyond sales technique there are the human skills of what to tell the computer (that's what it is) to do. And here there IS an enormous difference. You can either buy a set of pre-programmed modules off-the-shelf, or you can get someone to programme the "computer", that actually understand what boilers and air-handlers do. No they aren'tt light switches, boilers pre and post-purge, and no a PID is not a suitable solution for controlling a non-proportional response.

My tip to the energy manager, take the controls salesman into your plant room and ask him to explain what a sedimentation vessel achieves between primary and secondary circuits beyond the obvious (hint : hydraulic de-coupling of pumped circuits) . If he (or she) can't, then get someone who can - most local HVAC contractors can put someone in the frame to do the job.

And if your control system has to be configured by an "in-house expert" apply the same test and then say no - It is an artifical differentiator to suggest exclusivity and sucker byers with higher prices - that game went out of style a decade ago. the big-boys just have'nt all figured it yet.

Correction - some have - they call you cash cows - go and be assertive or go and be milked dry - the choice is yours !

If you think this article might help anyone or make them smile wryly - please do share it - and if you disagree and want to argue - I make mistakes - that's what the comments are for !

Why not also see what http://kwiqly.com can do for you ? - we don't sell or recommend controls systems - because it's all the same to you!

PS - Are you aware that you can get free heating and cooling degree-day data for anywhere in the world from us ?

Lean Energy Management Project Startups

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:01:00 +0000

Why Lean Energy Project Management Startups ?

- isn't it just a string of buzzwords ?

In this post we will explore some ideas from the business startup field (the word startup seems to have been adopted - will not resist), which have great merit, and go further to see how they apply in an energy management context.

This is appropriate because I believe an energy Manager necessarily has a little entrepreneurial spirit - they have to change the ways that things are done, or in management speak - disrupt. Secondly project pitching & resourcing is lifeblood to any energy conservation initiative and if a project runs out of cash it flounders, and it is better to retire hurt than to drown.

In the entrepreneurial environment in recent months much has been made of lean startup ideas as described by Eric Ries, and more recently Seth Godin has made an observation that any project needs to be support declaring victory or risk an ill defined vagueness that does not deserve the title "project".

These ideas are extremely generic and much can be learned from them in other fields, but let's take a look at what we mean by "lean" and how it applies to Energy Management (beyond the obvious).

The idea of a lean business startup is one can get off the ground for minimum overhead, keeping risks (loss of control, direction, cash and credibility) to a minimum "burn rate". Only once "off the ground", do issues like scaling, marketing, and funding come to bear.

So there we had it - the obvious "burn-rate"; but when talking about energy management I am not referring to burning less fuel, but to the process of managing projects that are perceived as "alternative", "non-core" or simply "damn risky."

Since some readers of this may not be energy managers, let's first characterise the world of the energy manager. If you are doing anything at all you are using energy. the word energy is derived from activity in Ancient Greek. There is no avoiding it. Here are five points that relate to startup issues and not in a positive way.

1) Non-core business

Most people spend their lives focussing on something other than the energy they use. Automatic trading systems in banks buy and sell $billions for the cost of a few cents worth of energy. The energy cost of manufacturing most products remains small (though it is rising), so the energy used by a sweetshop, is rather secondary to the objective of stopping children from stealing candy, while relieving them of their pocket money. This means that energy comes as an always essential overhead, but usually at the end of a list of other concerns.

2) Who cares ?

The implications is that by throwing a light switch, the lowest of underpaid workers has authority to spend corporate cash on energy. Typically the same authority as the chairman!

3) If it ain't broke don't fix it

Energy management enters a new paradigm (sorry horribly over-used term but accurate here).
What worked adequately but inefficiently prior to An Inconvenient Truth has now been declared broken. And there is the word "declared" - we will come back to that. But while "broken" it still works !

4) No budget line

Since energy management is new (well new if we ignore that cave men probably practised it diligently). The process of funding energy management projects is fraught with nonsense.

How many people would invest in a safe as houses stock that guaranteed a 50% return on investment - very few - they just would not believe it. However, the investment criteria for energy conservation tends to run between one and three years (call it a 50% return). It seems you cannot give it away !

5) No Team

Most companies do not have a bunch of workers standing by to pick up a new project. This creates a huge "risk" perspective from a corporate perspective. Usually energy projects involve temporary outsourcing or redeployment of staff (who maybe responsible for keeping the boilers stoked - so to speak).

The worst of all possible worlds !

So to all you investors and VC's out there - how would you pitch an extremely scalable clean-tech project in-house with those responses to your investment criteria - not a "fit" ?

No Team, No funds, No market, No pain, and No track record - Well you wouldn't would you ?

However, if we look at the market that can exist once barriers come down it is a monster in terms of revenue, but most energy management projects also don't scale. They are one-building-at-a-time.

The conclusions are obvious.

The energy manager must be founder of a startup "project" that has little choice but to "bootstrap" - (to energy management readers "get off the ground with no investment").

As such the theory of lean startups applies strongly. Moreover, the ability to declare a successful project or "show traction" is utterly critical to the energy manager.

So what are the key lessons for the energy manager ?

1) Proof of concept

Your project must be plausible - and so pilots and case studies will help. But to be useful they need to be very clearly documented successes. This means metrics - How has performance changed? In essence a pilot study for energy management should be a low cost proof of a hypothesis - which should be stated up front. To complete a pilot, it will need to be "declarable" and you move on or you drop it.

Your pilot hypothesis does not need to be in-house - you can rely on "social proof" to be sure a technology works. Read the blogs and make the pros-cons arguments for yourself.

2) Getting over the chasm

Generally, returns on energy management projects are negative or substantial, simply because they are not trialled otherwise. So "getting to revenue" should be everything. Once you show payback (if not you need a new job) , ideally you can re-invest it. This should be negotiated up-front with your "funding environment". Get the authority to roll out the bigger projects on the basis of a success criteria, it is so much harder to tie down a deal on something that works after the event - because everyone wants a piece. You could think of this as your intellectual property (ownership of the project) - you don't want to "dilute" your ownership until it is declared a success with you as a founder at the helm.

3) Minimum Viable Product

As an energy manager, you want to keep you investments (time, credibility money if you have some) low until you show returns. This means you want to show returns as soon as possible.
The easiest way of doing this may be as follows:

Set up some good metering (high resolution off-site weather data - maybe from kWIQly :)
Disrupt a process that you believe is unnecessary systematically (a good example is to lower hot water flow temperatures in a zone with much harsher compensation or better yet control boilers on return temperature - if you aren't already !)
Record complaints ! - diligently
Rinse and repeat for a week - or maybe a month
Get weather corrected corroboration that is saved energy (kWIQly again!) - a proof of savings report takes seconds to generate).
Either you are making savings or not !
Poor long beer - enjoy

Note : If you can back up the savings claim with a well-documented case study (including the "no impact on comfort statistics"), then Bang the drum - ie go to your fundraisers. They should be expecting your call - because you have set expectations

If not - declare it (at least internally) and move onto another project - if you are an energy manager there are hundreds available - because nobody is seeing the opportunities you do !

Technorati Proof of Ownership

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:13:00 +0000

This post citing :

SXUB6RRR5YXK

Is a means for technorati to know I am who I say I am

Energy Management - The Fundamental Problem

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:12:00 +0000

Energy management is a fundamental problem at many levels for society, as we have to live somewhere, and "somewhere to live" is a fundamental human need, but what relates the problem and need ?

"Somewhere to live means" buildings, but also means an environment. Homes and offices, schools and hospitals all keep the weather out. Since we do work (Ancient. Gk. energos) precisely to keep the environment out it is hardly surprising that this hurts the environment !

Note: buildings consume 40-45% of all human serving energy

Tensions grow more heated as they become more personal - so I'm afraid we are going to get personal - lets move on (yes it's horrible).

Parents generally love their children, and so do Russians as Sting hoped with chilling irony during the Cold War.

It's a safe generalization, we know what we want "here and now",

but we can only guess at what our children will need "there and then".

Since we don't even know what they will have to tolerate - or whether they will be able to, and we may not be here to worry about it we overlook it - Here's how ...(Is that is enough to make you feel uncomfortable before we really begin? - sorry)

So parents have problems with our value systems of "now and then" ; there is a word for deferred gratification and how humans handle it Hyperbolic discounting and it isn't rational - because we aren't - a brief look at climate change politics makes that clear.

We also measure personal success in black and white terms - I makes money / I loses money. And clearly businesses measure success in terms of money.

Therefore, naturally there is a push for investment in "Cleantech" - not because survival matters , but perhaps because life or death of everyone is a really exciting monetary proposition; am I being cynical or should we hedge our bets ?

However, investing in a market you do not understand and cannot measure is risky - it is not so obvious how or whether we can actually measure energy management success (in so far as it applies to the individual and our children).

Consider the position of an energy manager - rather than making money, his or her first success metrics are a dynamic combination of:

Comfort and discomfort (non-linear, highly subjective, volatile)
Weather response (entirely arbitrary, external, unpredictable, demand driver)
Carbon emissions (not linear to energy use or efficiency, fuel-type dependent, political and legislative constraints)
Energy (usual metric for savings, but not linear to any other success criteria)
Money ( consumption is automated this results in zero elasticity of demand - in short term markets)

This means we business and consumers alike are price takers - our building controls make us perfect hyperbolic discounters of money - because we value comfort !

In other words, our behaviour is fully consistent with children who cannot defer gratification, addicts and people who really care nothing for their future or that of their children.

So, having considered that the energy manager does not even have a single success criteria (hardly surprising that everyone loves to hate the building services engineer) , let us consider the most bizarre fact of all.

A great novelty in this massive Cleantech market is Smart-whatever. We have smart-grid, smart-meters, smart-buildings, and even en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology - which is fairly uninspiring;).

None of these "Smart" devices actually share a common yardstick or success criteria, they do not interact by a common protocol (other than IP ) and they do not share objectives!

To be clear, not only do they not share pricing objectives, but they so not share any other single common measure.

So we will look at these "success" markets in terms of the money market, because it is the most familiar, but do not forget that there is an equally valid demand for heat and supply of clothing (and these are no less arbitrary measurement units if the primary role of a building is comfort "at any cost")

A corollary of this is that in the large (there are minor exceptions) - energy demand does not respond at all to energy pricing in the short term. That's right, if the spot market price of energy double, the rate of consumption does not waver.

However the supply side market does - because they are free to speculate !

This is my claim all short - term energy trading volume statistics are determined purely demand side, whereas all market price movements are made by the supply side.

How can we be sure of this :

If the weather gets cold (all other things being equal), thermostats and building control systems turn on and create heat demand - thermostats are unaware of price (though they do have meta control-systems that react to long term market trends - i.e. people) so in the medium term marginal demand is unaware of price (this defines price in-elasticity). If human heating preferences change in response to price 1% per annum (they do not) we can be sure of our assumption.

However heat can be conveniently stored extremely efficiently as gas or wood or as heat ( I am thinking heat pumps here).

Now the extra-ordinary thing. The instantaneous market need for heat in buildings is always zero !

This sounds like a crazy statement, but if on a winters day you go into the average 5* hotel, palace, or a stock-brokers skyscraper and turn off the boilers, no-one will notice for a few hours. I have done it !

Eventually they will notice (if it really is winter - but not so much otherwise - One 5 star hotel I know of in the UK in November risked having no heating facilities for three days - the engineer did not mention this to the GM because he wanted the refit to go ahead ). In most buildings, particularly larger ones cooling will take a period of hours rather than minutes (and not the micro-seconds of market trading opportunity).

Note to Keith - You know who you are - a real engineer !

There is therefore exploitable market potential in deferring heat, and if heating is deferred less is used !

Why? - if you defer heating, when supply is resumed the load is greater and with greater load, efficiency is higher.

As a result, there are numerous Gizmos that disable boilers or delay firing, and they do save money - they simply do not save as much as a properly configured control system.

Finally, these flaws in the market (for success - however it is measured) can be identified by watching energy consumption data and weather.

All "market" anomalies have distinctive profiles that can be recognized - this leads to sophisticated or simple improvements - like "hey it's Sunday, New Years Day and your chiller compressors are running" - as we saw in a number of client buildings !

Both data sources should be acquired independently from the system that controls the building (just as you don't let a child take his own temperature - there is no knowing where he might stick the thermostat to get a day off school - buildings sensors are equally untrustworthy!).

A convenient place to bring them together is in the cloud, where independent and objective analysis can be conducted scalably, remotely and non-intrusively.

All we need to do now as a society,is to agree when we should do what - or whether we actually do love our children - The choice is ours - lets make it !

PS Why do we call a thing that knows nothing of prices, our comfort, carbon or consumption a building control system ?

PPS - And why are we renaming them to Smart Buildings and data-logging facilities to Smart Meters ?

Big Fish, Little Fish

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:53:00 +0000

In a great small post Seth Godin writes How much are you going to tip?

He is talking about our need to confrom and that consequently it is easier to enter small markets than big ones and dominate those.

Another take on this is that sometimes an approach to a problem is wrong, but is the one everyone is using. I think energy benchmarking is in danger of fitting this category.

A solution is to offer bespoke solutions that look at each building empirically rather than comparing against the herd

Air Conditioning - The Black Art of Air Quality Control

noreply@blogger.com (James Ferguson) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:55:00 +0000

"Contradictory nonsense from wikipedia"

It amazes us at kwiqly that Air Conditioning and Heating is controlled so inefficiently, but on closer inspection it is completely understandable - it must be due to a combination of factors as follows :

Firstly there is no clear and universal fresh-air policy - take the following contradictory nonsense from wikipedia and try to interpret it. While humans are broadly similar all over the planet it appears :

UK schoolchildren can manage 1,500 ppm,
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says 1,000 ppm are a marker that suggests inadequate ventilation
ASHRAE the experts in America suggest it should be better by 600 ppm than outdoors.
Europeans can handle 3500 ppm.
US Occupational Safety and Health Administration says 5,000 ppm is OK for prolonged periods

From ASHRAE we must assume that every city and mountain peak have equally fresh air ! ...
and ASHRAE is the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers - who ought to know ??? So what is the lowly engineer to do ?

Extract from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_air_quality ...

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a surrogate for indoor pollutants emitted by humans and correlates with human metabolic activity. Carbon dioxide at levels that are unusually high indoors may cause occupants to grow drowsy, get headaches, or function at lower activity levels. Humans are the main indoor source of carbon dioxide. Indoor levels are an indicator of the adequacy of outdoor air ventilation relative to indoor occupant density and metabolic activity. To eliminate most Indoor Air Quality complaints, total indoor carbon dioxide should be reduced a difference of less than 600 ppm above outdoor levels. NIOSH considers that indoor air concentrations of carbon dioxide that exceed 1,000 ppm are a marker suggesting inadequate ventilation. ASHRAE recommends that carbon dioxide levels not exceed 700 ppm above outdoor ambient levels.^[14] The UK standards for schools say that carbon dioxide in all teaching and learning spaces, when measured at seated head height and averaged over the whole day should not exceed 1,500 ppm. The whole day refers to normal school hours (i.e. 9.00am to 3.30pm) and includes unoccupied periods such as lunch breaks. European standards limit carbon dioxide to 3500 ppm. OSHA limits carbon dioxide concentration in the workplace to 5,000 ppm for prolonged periods, and 35,000 ppm for 15 minutes.

So Wiki talks utter nonsense (and represents one assumes the combined intelligence of a lot of contributors) -I have no idea what the right answer is - and I might be considered an expert. (but let's not forget Moulds, NOx, Legionallae, CO, So and all sort of other factors that come into play before we have even considered heat and humidity !!!

A pragmatic approach

So lets move on and just assume that there exists some minimum policy for fresh air ventilation, even though defining it is surely a black art.

Then we have to consider targets for humidity and air temperature. These are also culturally diverse, but generally it is easy to define an adequate envelope of suitable conditions.

Having done this the controls engineer must simply decide how best to achieve this, which is dependent on a huge array of possible plant configurations (yes almost every building is different), but we can break out a theme or two:

Continual vs non-continual occupancy

Which functions are available ? -

Passive or Forced ventilation, Humidification, Dehumification, Recirculation, Heat recovery (run around coils, crossover plates, enthalpy or heat wheels etc), Heating, post- dehumidification reheat, Cooling and so on...

Now the controls engineer sitting in his clean office (who may understand bits and bytes, but has probably never seen a valve actuator) overlooks the fact that when you switch off cooling and switch on heating, the two co-exist for a while (a radiator coil does not get cold the moment you isolate the heat source). So the control engineer maintains the system he has designed never heats and cools at the same time. He is right to maintain that he has told it not to, but then there are those inconvenient rules of physics that stand in the way of the mighty controls engineer.

And guess who loses due to this systematic misunderstanding - We do !

PS - Are you aware that you can get free heating and cooling degree-day data for anywhere in the world from us ?

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