In an effort to promote best practices in energy audits and to fill a void in available information on everything from how to hire an auditor to what to look for in an audit report, ASHRAE released updated guidance in late 2011.
Jim Kelsey, P.E. is a principal at kW Engineering and a principal author of "Procedures for Commercial Building Energy Audits, Second Edition," which was written in collaboration with a group of experienced energy auditors and ASHRAE members. He spoke with Jennifer Kovacs Silvis, Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare Building Ideas, about the updated version of the book and how its guidance can be applied to healthcare facilities.
In the second part of a two-part series, Kelsey explores how energy audit reports can best be used, what common mistakes healthcare facilities make in energy efficiency, and what fixes won't break the bank.
What are some tips you can share on how to read a final energy audit report, analyze it, and use it moving forward?
That gets at another best practice that we discuss in the book. The energy audit ought to be actionable—that’s the word I like to use—something that is very clear to the owner on what they should do. Within the book, we have a standardized measure table—it’s referenced in the book as an EEM Summary Table. EEM’s are energy efficiency measures, and that table ought to make clear the cost-effectiveness of all the measures that are recommended. The audit should also contain plenty of supporting information. The owner ought to be able to hand that audit off to a vendor for a cost quote on the measures that are recommended there. If it doesn’t have that level of detail, then your auditor has shortchanged you.
In energy audits, we like to see that summary table with cost-effectiveness. We like to see detail of existing conditions and photographs that show what is on-site, and then detailed descriptions of exactly what to do both in terms of what equipment to install and how that equipment should be controlled. Controls are a big part of energy savings, and getting those specifications right is a critical juncture.
The other thing I would say to owners is not to shortchange their budget when it comes to commissioning of those measures. Commissioning is a critical part of the process, and when folks are trying to save money, that is one of the first things that gets cut out.
What are some of the common issues that time and time again come up in energy audits of healthcare facilities?
Like I said before, controls are a big issue, and healthcare can be bad about thinking things have to run 24/7 that don’t need to run 24/7, particularly medical office buildings that are part of a healthcare campus. So scheduling is always a very cost-effective and often overlooked component.
One issue that comes up with hospitals a lot is chilled water and hot water loops tend to be these kludged together systems, where there was a central loop and then they added a second loop for the new building and then they added a new loop off of that. In the process, you have this kind of Frankenstein distribution system that was not designed to do what it’s doing now.
So we see that come up quite a bit—chilled water and hot water distribution systems that have been grown almost organically over time and have not had a comprehensive design view of them.
You’ve mentioned how hospitals tend to grow in pieces and parts over time—addition after addition after addition—is that a large contributor to the lack of energy efficiency at healthcare facilities?
Yes, it’s the fundamental playing field we see at so many hospitals that have caused systems that nobody really took a top-down approach to. That’s a good message to designers of new hospitals in greenfield development: Plan for your first addition, because I guarantee in 20 or 30 years there will be one.
It’s one of the neat positions energy auditors have—a lot of designers don’t get to spend time in their buildings beyond the commissioning process. We see them 10-15 years down the road, after they’ve been run by non-engineers for a while, and see what’s happened with them.
When you turn over a building to non-engineers, how do you manage energy efficiency? Should you wait for those 10-15 years to go by before doing an audit?
Certainly not. We recommend somewhere in the range of three to five years—certainly no more than every five years, because things degrade over that time frame.
Generally speaking, do you see facilities adhere to that?
Some of our customers do; more sophisticated customers tend to do that. But it’s not the rule of the industry. A lot of times nobody’s been there for 10 or 15 years.
The other thing that happens is a lot of utilities provide low-cost or free energy audits that are conducted by people with some training. But there are all kinds of energy audits, and we see a lot of audits that sit on the shelf for a whole bunch of reasons.
Part of it is the capital planning process, and a lot of owners don’t act because they think they’re going to sell the facility or they’re going to sell part of the facility and they don’t want to do anything. Some audits are done by utility company staff who know something about energy efficiency, but can’t make the engineering detail level of recommendations that a facility manager might want to see before they replace a chiller or redesign a chilled water distribution system.
Are there any fixes healthcare facilities should consider that won’t require large capital expenses? Are there simple things to do to make your building more efficient?
I would advocate the retro-commissioning process, which really is outside the scope of this book, which is more about the capital project. The two approaches our company uses are energy audits and retro-commissioning, and there are some grey areas in between. But the general accepted definition is audits pertain to capital-intensive projects that require a lot of investment and retro-commissioning really applies to making sure the existing systems work the way they are intended, or that they work optimally.
In the retro-commissioning process, you generally spend more money on the investigation itself, but the measures are very low-cost and typically have very good economics. If a facility is looking for quick fixes, it should stick to the retro-commissioning approach.
There are lots of avenues available for capital, also. If they want to make an investment but they don’t have the cash available, energy service companies will provide financing for large capital projects—everything from replacing chillers and boilers to installing cogeneration combined heat and power systems. So that’s always an option.
In California, we’re rolling out a commercial version of the PACE program, the Property Assessed Clean Energy financing program, and that would be an option available for a healthcare facility that wanted to take care of the financing themselves to hire a design-build contractor and finance through PACE.
But when it comes to low-cost ways to save energy, nothing beats controls. It’s taking a look at turning everything off that can be turned off and looking at how the chilled water temperatures, supply air temperatures, all those things are controlled. There are subtle changes that can make a big difference in your energy use without a big capital investment.
To read the first installment of this two-part series, please visit http://www.healthcarebuildingideas.com/article/how-tos-energy-audits-part-1