“A penny saved is a penny earned.”
“An investment in knowledge always pays
the best interest.”
– Benjamin Franklin
magic pill. Lowering our bodily intake of
those nasty calories, or in this case therms
of gas and k Wh of electricity, will do our
bodies and energy budgets good. Benchmarking is a key method of measuring
your success.
STAR® Building Upgrade Manual.” The EPA
“advocates benchmarking energy performance to optimize energy use and achieve
maximum energy and cost savings, and
using proven energy-efficient technologies
and an integrated approach for building
upgrades.”
Hence, the EPA created a benchmarking tool for the ENERGY STAR program based
on energy consumption, operating characteristics and management practices of U.S.
buildings. It is available at the EPA/U.S.
Department of Energy benchmarking tool
Web site www.epa.gov/EEBUILDINGS/
benchmarking/detail/. To use it, you first
need to create a user name and password
to access the database and input the building size and age, the types of space usage
and energy billing information. It takes
about 30 minutes of inputting your building
data into the tool to benchmark building
energy use. The output results in a numerical building score from one to 100, rating
your building using the national energy-per-formance rating system. The score is adjusted for key operating variables including
building size, occupant density, operating
hours, plug loads, climate and weather. A
score of 50 is average, and buildings achieving a rating of 75 or greater are eligible to
apply for the ENERGY STAR designation.
In closing, we need a solution for
decreasing energy consumption in this
country, and starving ourselves is not quite
realistic as a long-term solution. But the
dieting analogy is: There is no quick fix or
Steve Tredinnick, PE, is a
project engineer/manager
for Affiliated Engineers in
Madison, Wis., with more
than 20 years’ experience
related to building HVAC
systems. The past 10 years of
his work have been focused
on district energy systems. Tredinnick is a
graduate of Pennsylvania State University with
a degree in architectural engineering. He is a
member of IDEA and ASHRAE and is currently
chair of ASHRAE TC 6. 2 District Energy.
Tredinnick may be reached at stredinnick@
aeieng.com.
Column also available at
www.districtenergy.org/de_magazine.htm
