Watson: If treating a total facility as a “Single System” is the key to energy efficiency, why do most in the Energy Efficiency Profession focus on the individual energy users instead of the Total Facility?
Holmes: I think a lot of it has to do with their training Watson. Whether it is in engineering school or the plethora of training courses now available to energy managers, people are taught to focus on the individual energy systems instead of the “Total Facility”.
Watson: I printed out the description for the “Fundamentals of Energy Auditing” course being offered this month by the Department of Professional Development at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It says the attendees will “Study the types of energy systems installed in these buildings.” and “Analyze those systems to improve energy efficiency.” It also mentions temporary audit instrumentation and estimating techniques.
Holmes: I took that same Course at Wisconsin when I first entered the profession. Incredibly, the description of the current course is nearly identical to the one I took in the mid-‘70s.
How many other fields can you think of that are still providing the same entry-level training that they were 40 years ago? The presumption that the first tool developed on the heels of the Energy Crisis in the mid-‘70s is still the best, is ridiculous.
Watson: Even so, in 2015, more than 40 years since you took that course at Wisconsin, not only are Energy Audits accepted, more and more government agencies are requiring them. They are still being taught as the first step in every energy project even though, as far as we have been able to determine, there has never been a single scientific study that verifies the accuracy of Energy Audits.
Holmes: The antiquated methods they are teaching are part of what I refer to as the Bottom-Up Approach. Studying and analyzing all of the energy systems at the beginning of a project, before you know which ones are a significant part of the energy costs, wastes time and resources.
Energy Audits use "temporary instrumentation" along with “estimating techniques” to "guess" what the actual data would be if they actually had some. Not only do Energy Audits waste time gathering inaccurate and unnecessary information, their methods result in erroneous conclusions and recommendations.
Watson: Why waste time and money studying systems that turn out to be very small contributors to the energy costs? The most logical approach would be to find a way to first determine which systems are the most significant, then focus on those systems.
Holmes: We found a way to do that in 1979. The idea came from some of my students in a Thermal Systems class who were Nuclear Plant operators and managers. In order to account for the fuel used, they had to document where all of the energy went, do a Daily Energy Balance of the total facility. I thought if they could do it in a giant nuclear plant, I could find a way to do it in all of the facilities we were managing.
The key is to view the total facility as a Single System, and we developed a way to do that using what we have always called our “Top-Down Approach”. It’s based on sound engineering fundamentals, scientific problem-solving techniques and actual monitored (not estimated) data.