WEB-BASED ENERGY AUDITING

There are several useful benchmarks you should consider. The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has expanded the Energy Star rating program from residential products to commercial buildings and has developed a web based program for ranking the efficiency of facilities (Web based auditing). Another benchmark is provided by power companies. For decades, utilities have studied and published “Class Load Profiles.” Class load profiles show the typical consumption of residences, small and large commercial buildings, industrial facilities, and even street lighting. Utilities recognize that within a class, many customers operate in a similar way.
Therefore the class load profile can be used for forecasting demand, setting tariffs, and settling payment of wholesale power contracts. Comparing your own load profile to the class load can offer a valuable benchmark. Another reference point is the extensive studies made on the relation between weather and the consumption of electricity. An industry rule of thumb is that
weather explains 30 % of the changing demand for power. Without taking account of the weather, it is difficult to compare this month’s energy use to last month or last year. Removing the transient effects of weather reveals the baseline energy consumption of a facility.

An EIS and Web audit - benchmarking system has the following parts:

1) Automatic Metering System. If your utility does not provide interval data, have an electrician install a shadow meter downstream from the revenue meter. The shadow meter will use Current Transformers (CTs) and a transducer which outputs Watt Hour pulses or Kilowatt hours. Vendors offer software which contains links to a variety of databases including EPA’s Energy
Star database

2) Networking. You should use the Internet to collect data for your benchmarking. A good benchmarking process needs access to websites which have historical data, libraries, and live weather information. Just as benchmarking is a continual process, so is the need to continually update the benchmarks. There are always additional good sites to find and link to your benchmarking process.

3) Server and Database. Interval data from hundreds of points in an operation comes in over the Internet as packets with a header, contents, and checksum. The server sorts the incoming data by such categories as packet type, business unit, ID, date & time stamp, and inserts data in the proper form into the EIS database. The database is the heart of the benchmarking system.
The databases frequently chosen for Energy Information Systems are Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and the open source MySQL. The advantages of open source (including the Linux operating system) are that a user group with talented software people can extend the features of the software on their own and make this available to other members of the group. This is particularly helpful for users, such as universities, electric coops, or schools, who share many common problems.

4) The Browser. Data from the data base is presented to users in reports they see on their web browsers. The browser presents a dashboard with a few key functions displayed and access to much more information available by drilling deeper into the database. There are many advantages to browser-based software. Upgrades to the browser software can be made in the server and are then immediately available to all users. Administrative and support functions can also be accessed by any authorized user anywhere. New meters can be enrolled and addresses and telephone numbers entered from the field without returning to the office. Tech support personnel can diagnose and fix many problems remotely without field calls. There are many EIS products on the market. Most present some form of live data on a running basis. This data can then be printed as reports or downloaded into Excel for further processing by the user. In a benchmarking system, the customer brings up their own facility on a charting window, and then adds additional information from the benchmark features. For example, the benchmarks for School A will typically show School A’s load profile compared to a population of other similar schools, the class load profile for an average school, and School A’s load profile with variations due to temperature stripped out

For more information contacts at: info@intelen.gr