Level 1 Energy Audit Report (Scoping Study)

Customer New Zealand Head Office

Prepared by

Vector Ltd
For

Customer New Zealand

Vector Limited P O Box 99882 101 Carlton Gore Road Newmarket, Auckland Tel: +64 9 978 8227 Fax: +64 9 978 7506 www.vector.co.nz December 2010

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

Executive Summary
This level 1 energy audit (scoping study) was conducted for the Customer New Zealand head office in Auckland, a two storey office building of approximately 1,700sqm office space, with a high stud warehouse wing attached of approximately 460sqm floor area. Daily usage profiles and energy use indices suggest several areas where further investigation appears worthwhile, mainly in the heating air-conditioning and ventilation (HVAC) areas. A lighting study was also suggesting more energy efficient lighting alternatives, which could be installed with a consolidated payback period of 2.69 years (6 lighting products between 1.4 and 3.8 years excluding installation costs, and 1.6 and 4.6 including installation costs). It has also been noted that the head office would provide a promising site for a photovoltaic (PV) installation due to a large and well orientated, unshaded and unobstructed roof area, together with a favourable electricity tariff structure. The data and information shared in this report have been made available by Vector specifically for Customers use. The audits were conducted by Vector subcontractors, according to the professional and independent capacities expected of each under various standards and regulations.

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

Contents
1. 2.
2.1 2.2 2.3

Introduction ............................................................................... 1 Energy use................................................................................. 1

Monthly profile................................................................................................. 1 Daily profiles ................................................................................................... 1 Energy use indices ........................................................................................... 3

3.
3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Energy users .............................................................................. 3

Lighting .......................................................................................................... 3 Heating, ventilation and air conditioning ............................................................. 3 Productivity ..................................................................................................... 4 Domestic ........................................................................................................ 5

4. 5. 6. 7.

Energy balance ........................................................................... 5 Tariff analysis ............................................................................. 7 Potential for photovoltaic power generation .................................... 9 Recommendations ...................................................................... 9

Disclaimer While every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of the material in this report, Vector Limited makes no warranty as to its accuracy, completeness or usefulness for any particular purpose, and accepts no liability for errors of fact or opinion.

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

1.

Introduction

Vector Ltd was invited by Customer to conduct a study of the Customer head office building regarding the electricity load used for lighting and for the balance of systems within the building. The head office consists of a two level building of approximately 1,700sqm office space, with a high stud warehouse wing attached of approximately 460sqm floor area and built around 2005. This scoping study was conducted to conform to a Level 1 energy audit under AS/NZS 3598:2000.

2.
2.1

Energy use
Monthly profile

The monthly load profile was established from monthly invoices from 1/09/2009 to 31/08/2010, and is shown in Figure 1. During this period total consumption of electricity amounted to 388,597 kWh at a cost of $85,227 (average cost 21.93 cents/kWh).

1,200.00 Electricity Usage (kWh/day) 1,000.00 800.00 600.00 400.00 200.00 -

Figure 1: Monthly load profile

There is some seasonal pattern that suggests that summer air-conditioning load results in higher daily consumption than winter heating load (despite longer lighting hours in winter). September data looks somewhat out of line, and short of any other explanation the client might be able to offer (e.g. unusual operating hours), this could be indicative of some fighting between heating and air-conditioning in this period. Recommendation 1: Investigate cause of high power usage during September. 2.2 Daily profiles

Load profiles were established from Stream meter data obtained through www.streaminfo.co.nz for the period 1/09/2009 to 31/08/2010 (same period as above). Daily profiles are shown below for a typical summer month (February) and a typical winter month (August).

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

120

Summer Day (February 2010)

100

80 Mon

Load (kW)

Tue 60 Wed Thu 40 Fri Sat 20 Sun

Figure 2: Summer day load

80 70 60 50

Winter Day (August 2010)

Mon Tue

Load (kW)

40 30 20 10 0

Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

Figure 3: Winter day load

While the summer profile is typical for buildings of this type with the highest (air-conditioning) load in the afternoon, the winter profile does not display the more usual high heating loads early in the morning, then steadily declining. Recommendation 2: Investigate cause of high power usage in winter afternoons. The profiles also indicate unusually long operating hours for an office building of this type, with load only really dropping sharply after 8.30 pm, despite the main air-conditioning unit reportedly being switched off via timer at 7.00 pm. This would indicate that lights are not switched off as soon as people leave for home. Recommendation 3: Investigate long usage hours, and air-conditioning timer setting. Also remarkable in the profiles are high load periods around midnight or during early morning hours, for 4 days per week. While the timing suggests this may be representing cleaning hours, the size and duration of these load periods appears excessive. Recommendation 4: Investigate cause of high night load periods 4 days per week.

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

Base load during weekends appears to be at 2 distinct levels, 17 kW during the day and 22 kW during the night. Possibly the step change is explained by security lighting during the night. The remaining 17 kW load can not be explained by servers and associated air-conditioning alone (maybe 4 kW all together, see following section), and this warrants further investigation. Recommendation 5: Investigate high weekend load, and reason for step changes. 2.3 Energy use indices

Applying the total consumption of 388,597 kWh/year to the total office (1,727sqm) and warehouse (466sqm) areas together results in an energy use index of 177 kWh/sqm year. Not counting the (possibly very low energy use) warehouse area and applying the total energy use to the office area only, the energy use index rises to 225 kWh/sqm year. This is comparable to typical energy use indices for office buildings of around 200 kWh/sqm year, but leaves room for improvement considering that best new buildings are achieving 20-100 kWh/sqm year.

3.
3.1

Energy users

All energy users on site use electricity, no other forms of energy are used. Lighting

Table 1 lists the existing luminaires in the building, and suggests alternative lighting options. On top of the savings being achieved by using lights and luminaires with higher efficacy, lower light power consumption leads to secondary savings through the reduced need for airconditioning, and the longer lifetime of modern lights results in reduced light replacement and maintenance costs.
Existing Watts per Replacement Watts per Current New New load (kW) Saving Energy Saving Maint. Capex excl. Payback
1 2

Type luminaire Troffer 3*36W T8 135 Triple Downlight 84 Double Downlight 52 Single Downlight 52 Troffer 2*58W T8 140 Highbay 420
1 2

No Type luminaire No load (kW) load (kW) incl aircon 158 TBS528 2 x 28w 61 200 21.330 12.200 9.461 30 BBS150 25 43 2.520 1.075 0.642 30 FBS120 2 x 18w 36 15 1.560 0.540 0.234 22 BBG360 25 32 1.144 0.800 0.697 12 TCS125 58 18 1.680 1.044 0.853 10 TPS 150 220 10 4.200 2.200 1.600 262 318 32 18 13

Cost ($/an) $ 9,006 $ 1,425 $ 1,006 $ 339 $ 627 $ 759 $ 13,163

Cost ($/an) $ 1,162 $ 95 $ 385 $ 97 $ 62 $ 221 $ 2,021

instal. ($) (years) $ 14,000 1.4 $ 4,945 3.3 $ 1,575 1.1 $ 1,664 3.8 $ 2,304 3.3 $ 1,350 1.4 $ 25,838 1.7

assumes additional savings of 30% through reduced airconditioning load based on 22.45cents/kWh, average for weekdays 8am to 8pm, 13 hrs/day, 5 days/week, 52 weeks/year

Table 1: List of existing luminaires and replacement options

Annual savings and replacement payback times (before installation costs) are also shown. These vary from 1.4 years to just over 3.8 years for the replacement of currently operational lights. If light replacements become due anyway, the payback times for using the more efficient alternatives become much shorter. Recommendation 6: Implement lighting upgrades now where this meets payback criteria, and upgrade to more efficient lighting options when replacements are due. 3.2 Heating, ventilation and air conditioning

The main HVAC unit is a Multichill ACR 1100W screw compressor unit (30kW compressor, 107kW cooling capacity, R407c refrigerant) supplied by Cooke Industries in 2005, cooling a chilled water circuit supplying 27 fan coil units. The unit is reported to be controlled by a timer (on at 7am, off at 5pm) and by chilled water return temperature. The evaporator pump is wired to run permanently, reportedly for control purposes. Recommendation 7: Investigate whether evaporator pump usage can be reduced. A small section of chilled water piping was observed to be lacking insulation. Recommendation 8: Fix gaps in chilled water pipe lagging. Heating is achieved by multiple resistance heaters in the fan coil units adding up to a total of 74kW of electrical heating load.
Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

The server room is cooled by a separate inverter wall mounted split system (Daikin 35HVEA, 3.6kW cooling capacity, 1.4KW electric load) operating permanently. Further details on the HVAC system are included in table 2 below.

HVAC No W/item kW peak Compressor 1 33,000 33.00 Cooling Fans 2 2,000 4.00 Pump 1 1,000 1.00 Fan Coil Units 27 320 8.64 Fresh Air Fans 1 670 0.67 Resistance Heaters 27 2,741 74.00 Storeroom Exhaust Fan 1 170 0.17 Server AC 1 1,400 1.40 Transfer Fan 1 70 0.07 Total 122.95
Table 2: List of energy users HVAC

Windows at the western (front) side of the building are fitted with sunshades, however during the site visit on a sunny day it was observed that not many of the sunshades were drawn, with significant solar heat gain being observable by the windows, placing additional load on the airconditioning system. Recommendation 9: That sunshade along the western (front) wall windows are drawn during sunny summer mornings. 3.3 Productivity

Items under this category are made up of computers, screens and printers. A large number of desktop computers are on site, with a smaller number of (more efficient) laptops. All screens are LCD type (efficient compared to CRT screens). Printer power consumption depends mainly on their usage pattern, and table 3 below shows the (theoretical) peak load if all printers would be working at rated power. The printers on site are promoted by having a very low standby energy use of only 2.2 W.

Productivity Downstairs Desktop Laptop Screen LCD 14" Screen LCD 17" Screen LCD 22" Upstairs Desktop Laptop Screen LCD 17" Screen LCD 22" Server Printers Total

No 13 20 6 12 8

W/item kW peak 40 20 20 33 42 0.52 0.40 0.12 0.40 0.34

54 11 31 29 36 10

40 20 33 42 60 2000

2.16 0.22 1.02 1.22 2.16 20.00 28.55

Table 3: List of energy users productivity equipment

Recommendation 10: Switch off computers, screens and printers at the wall when not in use (i.e. at night).
Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

3.4

Domestic

Domestic type items are listed in table 4 below.

Domestic Water Cooler Fridge Fridge Freezer Water Boiler Coffee Machine Vending Machine Dishwasher Microwave Total

No

pp pp pp pp

W/item or Wh/day/p kW peak 1 42 0.04 3 300 0.90 2 200 0.40 1 200 0.20 13 14 2 900 1.80 1.4 0.4 3.34

Table 4: List of energy users domestic equipment

For some of the items, power usage has been established based on typical per person usage numbers1, instead of counting appliances with an unknown usage pattern. For these items no count is given in the second column (No), but pp is shown instead. Most of the appliances (fridges, dishwashers, etc) are of reasonably late design, and updating these with more energy efficient, new appliances is not considered cost effective at this stage. However, there appears to be potential for consolidating the number of fridge/freezers on site (there are currently 6). Recommendation 11: Consolidate fridge/freezers into fewer appliances.

4.

Energy balance

The energy end users listed above are summarized in table 5, together with their estimated day and night time loads.

Energy Audit Manual New Zealand, June 2007 5

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

Item Lighting Troffer 3*36W T8 Triple Downlight Double Downlight Single Downlight Troffer 2*58W T8 Highbay Warehouse Total HVAC Compressor Cooling Fans Pump Fan Coil Units Fresh Air Fans Resistance Heaters Storeroom Exhaust Fan Server AC Transfer Fan Total Productivity Downstairs Desktop Laptop Screen LCD 14" Screen LCD 17" Screen LCD 22" Upstairs Desktop Laptop Screen LCD 17" Screen LCD 22" Server Printers Total Domestic Water Cooler Fridge Fridge Freezer Water Boiler Coffee Machine Vending Machine Dishwasher Microwave Total Grand Total

No 158 30 30 22 12 10

Load W/item or Factor Wh/day/p kW peak day 135 84 52 52 140 420 21.33 2.52 1.56 1.14 1.68 4.20 32.43 90% 90% 90% 90% 90% 90%

kW Load average Factor day night 19.20 2.27 1.40 1.03 1.51 3.78 29.19 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

kW average night -

1 2 1 27 1 27 1 1 1

33,000 2,000 1,000 320 670 2,741 170 1,400 70

33.00 4.00 1.00 8.64 0.67 74.00 0.17 1.40 0.07 122.95

15% 15% 100% 100% 100% 15% 100% 100% 100%

4.95 0.60 1.00 8.64 0.67 11.10 0.17 1.40 0.07 28.60

0% 0% 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% 0%

1.00 1.40 2.40

13 20 6 12 8

40 20 20 33 42

0.52 0.40 0.12 0.40 0.34

75% 75% 75% 75% 75%

0.39 0.30 0.09 0.30 0.25

5% 5% 5% 5% 5%

0.03 0.02 0.01 0.02 0.02

54 11 31 29 36 10

40 20 33 42 60 2000

2.16 0.22 1.02 1.22 2.16 20.00 28.55

75% 75% 75% 75% 100% 10%

1.62 0.17 0.77 0.91 2.16 2.00 8.95

5% 5% 5% 5% 100% 0%

0.11 0.01 0.05 0.06 2.16 0.02 2.50

1 3 2 1 pp pp 2 pp pp

42 300 200 200 13.00 14.00 900 1.40 0.40

0.04 0.90 0.40 0.20

1.80

100% 30% 20% 20% 120 120 20% 120 120

3.34 187.28

0.04 0.27 0.08 0.04 1.56 1.68 0.36 0.17 0.05 4.25 70.99

100% 30% 20% 20%

20%

0.04 0.27 0.08 0.04 0.36 0.79 5.69

Table 5: Energy users and average day and night time loads Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

From this the following average daily profile can be constructed. Note that night time lighting load has been set at 18 kW, in order to account for night cleaning, and in order to align this graph with the daily profiles in section 2.2. Further investigation (already covered in recommendation 4) is required to determine whether the high night time and weekend load is really caused by lighting only, or by other users such as ventilation fans.
80.00 70.00 60.00

Load (kW)

50.00 40.00 30.00 20.00 10.00 HVAC Domestic Productivity Lighting

Figure 3: Constructed daily load profile

Based on this load profile, the following split in electricity use has been established. More than half of the annual load is represented by lighting, followed by HVAC and productivity items.

Figure 5: Approximate split of annual energy use

5.

Tariff analysis

The only energy form used on site is electricity, supplied via underground cable. The total charge consists of an energy charge, Vector network charge, Electricity Commission Levy, connection charge and metering charge.
Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

12:00:00 a_m_ 1:00:00 a_m_ 2:00:00 a_m_ 3:00:00 a_m_ 4:00:00 a_m_ 5:00:00 a_m_ 6:00:00 a_m_ 7:00:00 a_m_ 8:00:00 a_m_ 9:00:00 a_m_ 10:00:00 a_m_ 11:00:00 a_m_ 12:00:00 p_m_ 1:00:00 p_m_ 2:00:00 p_m_ 3:00:00 p_m_ 4:00:00 p_m_ 5:00:00 p_m_ 6:00:00 p_m_ 7:00:00 p_m_ 8:00:00 p_m_ 9:00:00 p_m_ 10:00:00 p_m_ 11:00:00 p_m_

HVAC 30%

Lighting 53% Domestic 5%

Productivity 12%

Energy is charged under a Time of Use (TOU) tariff consisting of 6 x 4 hour periods per day, different for weekday and weekend, and different for each of the 12 months (144 time zones).
25

Energy Charge Weekdays

January 20 February March

cents/kWh

15

April May June

10

July August

September October November

0 0-4 4-8 8-12 12-16 Timezones

Figure 6: Energy charge weekdays

16-20

20-24

December

25

Energy Charge Weekends

January 20 February March

cents/kWh

15

April May June

10

July August

September October November

0 0-4 4-8 8-12 12-16 Timezones

Figure 7: Energy charge weekends

16-20

20-24

December

The Vector network charge passed on BY RETAILER is somewhat unusual in that all of the network charge is in the form of a variable fee (a per kWh fee), rather than being based on some form of maximum demand or capacity, as is the norm. This means that the reward for reducing maximum demand is relatively low; however saving energy is rewarded no matter what time of the day the saving is made, even in the (Vector) network charge. No charge for power factor was evident in the invoices, and according to Stream data since June 2008 the power factor of the site was consistently better than 0.99.

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010

6.

Potential for photovoltaic power generation

The roof area of the building is largely clear of obstructions and free of any shading from hills, trees or neighbouring buildings. The slight slope of the roof is orientated due north, ideal for the installation of a PV system. The roof area of 1,300m2 would allow for the installation of up to almost 55kWp in PV power (mounted at 25o tilt, orientated due north, after allowance of clear space between rows to prevent shading from tilted panels). Considering Customers load profile, a PV installation of 15kWp would be appropriate, avoiding the need to export power and to reach an export power agreement with the electricity provider. Based on similar sized PV systems, installations like this would generate about 21,300kWh per year in AC power. In addition, PV arrays are not exclusive of successive installations, meaning that Customer could start with an installation and then add to it over the years, providing more and more of its energy requirements as energy prices continue to rise. Since Customer is supplied by a relatively expensive TOU energy tariff, and since the entire network cost is variably charged and therefore avoidable, the average avoided electricity cost for this site would be relatively high at 20.91cents/kWh (weighted average for PV generation profile). Recommendation 12: Investigate a PV installation.

7.

Recommendations

Recommendations made throughout the report are summarised in the table below:

No Recommendation 1 Investigate cause of high power usage during September 2 Investigate cause of high power usage in winter afternoons 3 Investigate long usage hours, and airconditioning timer setting 4 Investigate cause of high night load periods 4 days per week 5 Investigate high w eekend load, and reason for step changes 6 Implement lighting upgrades now where this meets payback criteria, 7 8 Fix gaps in chilled w ater pipe lagging 9 That sunshades along the w estern (front) wall windows 10

and upgrade to more efficient lighting options w hen replacements are due Investigate whether evaporator pump usage can be reduced are draw n during sunny summer mornings Switch off computers, screens and printers at the wall when not in use fewer appliances

11 Consolidate fridge/freezers into 12 Investigate a PV installation

Table 6: List of recommendations

Customer Head Office Scoping Study, November 2010