Energy Efficiency Made Simple Vol IV 2015

What gets measured, gets done. When energy was cheap, we did not care how much we used. Those days are gone. In any plant, process or system, we must be absolutely certain of how much is used, where it is used, and when it is used. Frankly, we all need the skills to measure and verify energy usage. Local capacity to train and educate in this space is well established.

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Determining energy savings Then and now I Bosman andY de Lange, EnergyTraining Foundation

A n initiative to develop an M&V protocol that would help de- termine energy savings from energy efficiency projects in a consistent and reliable manner was started by a group of volunteers in America. One of the larger goals of this initiative was to help create a secondary market for energy efficiency investments by developing a consistent set of M&V options that could be applied to a range of energy efficiency measures in a uniform manner resulting in reliable savings over the term of the project. Today, the Efficiency Valuation Organisation (EVO)-owned International Performance Meas- urement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) is the leading international standard in M&V protocols. IPMVP has been translated into 10 lan- guages and is used in more than 40 countries. Five thousand copies are ordered or downloaded annually [1]. South Africa took the lead in developing an M&V standard to measure energy savings and released the SANS/SABS 50010:2011 [2] almost concurrent with the release of the ISO 50010:2011 [3]. M&V experience was gained in South Africa because of the EskomDemand Side Management (DSM) initiative, which spurred the development of methodologies to determine energy savings accurately and trans- parently with the ability to be repeated and compared. Need for M&V M&V is seen as an additional discipline in the energy efficiency industry and most certainly has appeal with regard to new business opportuni- ties. The benefit and real value of M&V is not yet clearly understood in industry but rather seen as an ‘additional’ cost. The central purpose of M&V is to verify the energy savings achieved either to satisfy internal financial accounting and reporting requirements, or to meet the terms of third-party contracts for project implementation and management. In South Africa, M&V carried out in accordance with the SANS 50 010:2011 [2] standard is a requirement for energy efficiency tax rebates, and will most probably be the standard used to determine carbon emission tax reduction for energy efficiency initiatives as the greatest contributor to carbon emissions is the generation and use of energy. The IPMVP lists the benefits of M&V as: • Increases savings • Encourages better project engineering During the early 90s reluctance to invest in energy efficiency projects was the norm owing to the high uncertainty associated with the determination of the energy savings. This arose largely from inconsistencies in the way energy savings Measurement and Verification (M&V) was applied and the different levels of understanding of the topic.

• Demonstrates and captures the value of reduced emissions from energy efficiency and renewable energy investments • Helps organisations promote and achieve resource efficiency and environmental objectives • Reduces the cost of financing projects by: – Providing assurance of Return-On-Investment (ROI) on energy savings projects – Increasing confidence of funders that investment debts can be repaid by the savings – Reducing the risks associated with the investment Proven methodology The IPMVP methodology’s statistical principles used are the same regardless of the purpose of the analysis. In principle, M&V simply quantifies energy savings by comparing consumption before and after the retrofit where the ‘before’ case is defined as the ‘baseline performance’, and the ‘after’ case is referred to as the ‘post-installation – (Post-installation energy use) The factors that complicate energy savings determination include the way a baseline is determined, the adjustments that apply, how these adjustments are carried out, what measurements are required to determine post-installation performance, etc. and to remember that many factors that can be controlled, or not controlled, influence energy use and alter the baseline requirements. Cases in point are weather changes, occupancy patterns in a building, operating hours, production volumes, space conditions, equipment malfunction, space use changes, tariff changes, etc. These all affect true energy savings reflected and cannot be determined by the simple comparison of this month or year’s energy bill, to that of the previous month or year. Energy savings measurement has evolved over the past number of years to take account of all such factors through the IPMVP method- ology carried out in a specific framework to ensure quality compliance and control of the M&V process. Starting the M&V process Two important decisions need to be made before the M&V process can start: • Which M&V option as per the IPMVP must be chosen • The baseline definition for the option chosen (guided by what drives the energy consumption) M&V options IPMVP provides four options to the M&V process that can be chosen: Options A, B, C and D and they differ from each other in terms of the degree to which the retrofit can be measured separately from other facility components and the extent to which performance variables period’ [2]. In its simplest form: Savings = (Baseline Energy Use) ADJUSTED

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ENERGY EFFICIENCY MADE SIMPLE 2015