Energy Management Control Systems
Most likely, an energy management control system (EMCS) will be installed in any new facility. Plan to attend any training classes offered to the maintenance and operations staff. Consider video taping the sessions to provide orientation and training for new staff.
An EMCS is a powerful tool in the effort to save energy. In some cases, it can also provide historical monitoring functions. This can be useful when attempting to diagnose problems such as a demand spike on an electric bill.
To provide historical monitoring or trend logs of equipment performance or space temperature measurements, the EMCS needs to be programmed. For example, you could program the EMCS to give you temperature readings every minute in a particular room. Because an EMCS typically has a maximum number of trend points, it would save only a few days worth of information. If you reprogrammed that to every 10 minutes, you may be able to get a trend log for a whole month. You could also trend the “on” and “off” cycles of equipment.
Many energy management control systems also have electric demand shedding capabilities, typically accomplished in two ways:
- By prioritizing loads. For example, an electric domestic hot water tank could be shed first when the predetermined maximum load is reached, and;
- By duty cycling equipment. For example, turning HVAC equipment on for only a few minutes over a one-hour period. This “on” period is rotated from one piece of equipment to another.
If a facility has a high demand charge, different load-shedding strategies can provide substantial savings. Reducing the demand by 20 kW each month, at an average rate, would provide an annual savings of about $1,450. If this could be done at 20 facilities the annual savings from demand shedding alone would be about $28,900.