EPBD Air Conditioning Inspections promote energy efficiency
Energy consumption can increase by as much as 60% as a result of poor maintenance and dirty components
In England and Wales it has been a legal requirement to have an Air Conditioning Inspection since 4 January 2009 for buildings containing air conditioning with an effective rated output of over 250KW. This was then increased to buildings with an effective rated output of over 12KW by 4 January 2011.
The legislation was introduced by the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). The EPBD regulations have been in place in Northern Ireland and Scotland for a slightly shorter period.
Energy Efficiency Consultancy Ltd (EECO2) has provided more than 200 Air Conditioning Inspections in this time and a number of Compliance Plus Reports, which offer a more in depth survey and report. EECO2 can carry out Air Conditioning Inspections and support the implementation of any recommendations to completion.
EECO2 has worked in a number of different industries including private and public sectors to provide these reports and inspections. These include: the pharmaceutical industry, major hospitals, laboratories, offices, banks, distribution centres, supermarkets, and job centres and a number of different manufacturing sites including car manufacturing plants, steel works, chemical plants, and food manufacturing sites.
Measures can be identified that reduce energy costs that in some cases require little or no capital expenditure
Air Conditioning Inspections are intended to identify ways in which energy consumption of existing air conditioning systems and associated costs can be reduced. Measures can be identified that reduce energy costs that in some cases require little or no capital expenditure.
Examples of this can be to do with the maintenance of the air conditioning, including changing filters and cleaning coils. Energy consumption can increase by as much as 60% as a result of poor maintenance and dirty components.
Another example is the controls of the air conditioning system. This could be for a number of reasons such as poor design, poor operational knowledge and practice and also if the controls are integrated with other systems so they are not competing against each other.
Advice can be given about replacing old equipment, especially where plant contains R22 refrigerant, which is currently being phased out and will be banned completely by 2014.
The systems are energy benchmarked to show if the systems are sized correctly. If systems are sized incorrectly they will operate less efficiently and may lead to maintenance problems.
Replacing very old plant can sometimes have short pay-backs. A typical modern 5KW unit is 300% more efficient than an old unit containing R22. The efficiency increases with the size of the unit. An inverter-driven unit can reduce power consumption by 70% compared with a non-inverter driven system.
Another common feature that can be improved is the filter strategy for the air handling units. In many air handling units the design and the filters installed can be improved significantly, which will reduce both energy consumption and maintenance costs.
Air Conditioning Inspections lend themselves towards providing a structured energy management system at site in line with the ISO 50001 Energy Management system. ISO 50001 is an Energy management Standard, which establishes a framework to manage energy for industrial plants; commercial, institutional, or governmental facilities; or entire organisations.
At EECO2 we can monitor and prove energy savings with our bespoke Mobile Energy Monitoring Units (MEMU). Support is also available for the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy efficiency scheme. The CRC is a mandatory scheme aimed at improving energy efficiency and cutting emissions in large public and private sector organisations.
