Energy Ace regularly publishes Energy Tips in its newsletters. Here are some of recent ones.

"Consider Your Options" - when you plan your energy projects for next year, such as boilers and chillers, consider alternate fuel and dual-fuel options, e.g., gas vs. electric boilers. With the energy cost landscape in constant change, it pays to test your old assumptions about which fuel is best for which application. Dual-fuel situations give you more options when prices change and place you in a better negotiation position with your utility companies.

"Flushing Money" - Most water utilities bill you a certain dollar amount per unit of water consumed, say $2.00 per 1,000 gallons, and another dollar amount for sewage, say $1.75 per 1,000 gallons. The quantity of sewage is set as equal to the water, because water is metered while sewage is not. In other words, every gallon of water consumed is assumed to be flushed away as sewage and subject to the sewage charge. However, your facility may buy water for uses such as irrigation and cooling tower make up that does not find its way back to the sewage system and you shouldn't be paying sewage charges on it. To stop flushing this money away you can install irrigation meters on your landscaping water supply and establish a separate water account for irrigation. As for your cooling towers and boiler make up water, many (but not all) water jurisdictions will allow you to submeter makeup water and will give you a sewage credit for that amount if your meters meet their requirements. For one large university we estimated their annual savings potential for cooling towers alone could be over $160,000. Look into it!

"Burning the Midnight Oil" - Tired of seeing lights left on in empty offices, classrooms, and conference rooms around your facilities? You might consider installing occupancy sensors to turn off lights after a certain period of time when a room is empty. Occupancy sensors have been around a long time but if you tried them in the past and were unsatisfied, try again – they are much improved and today can even be combined with "smart" power strips to turn off not only lights but also plug loads in unoccupied spaces. Avoid the cheap ones and look for dual mode units that use both infrared and ultrasonic to detect occupancy. Finally, give lighting timers another look – no longer spring-loaded timers that tick when in use, modern timers are silent and solid-state reliable, and keep lights in classrooms or conference rooms from running all day, all night, and all weekend.

"Apples to Apples Energy Comparisons, Part One" - One way to benchmark your building is to compare its energy consumption from one year to the next. This tip is about making the comparison valid by making sure the month being compared has the same number of days. Your electric or gas meters are probably not read on the same day each month; as a result, a "month" may contain from 28 to 33 days, introducing a possible error of over ten percent. Adjust for this when making comparisons so you don't reach a faulty conclusion.

"When is Summer not Summer?" - when youre an electric utility, summer is not always summer. Be sure you know when "summer rates" go into effect and when they end. In many locales, summer is June through September. Don’t make a mistake and think summer begins when school is out if you’re a college or school system, and summer’s over when the kids come back. When the kids come back in August and "summer’ is still in full swing, a college or school system can get clobbered with high summer demand rates that it will pay for the next eleven months. Summer is over only when your electric utility says it is, so be sure you know the rules of the game so you can play and be a winner.

Are you Planning a retrofit of occupancy sensors for lighting? - if so, consider those that have a "manual on" position. Reader Roger Perry, Facilities Manager of the Phillip Merrill Environmental Center in Annapolis Maryland sent this tip and says:

"One feature we have found to be very valuable is a "manual on" setting. In this mode, the light is turned on at the switch in a normal fashion and, if it is left on, will turn itself off after the preset delay time. If someone walks into the room within 30 seconds of it timing out, it will turn itself back on. After thirty seconds, it must be turned on manually. This has a few advantages over the "automatic on" switches.

• It avoids lights coming on when not needed or wanted. (I've seen people forget to turn lights off but never forget to turn them on when needed.)
• It allows for much more accurate sensitivity settings. Since "false ons" are eliminated, sensitivity can be set to maximum to avoid "false offs".
• Because the occupant had to turn on the light, they are much more likely to turn it off when leaving saving even more energy than an occupancy sensor that had to wait for it's delay to time out.
• In our experience, people often turn off automatic on sensors when leaving a room resulting in a sensor that may or may not be set to come on automatically leading to confusion among staff and a belief that the sensors are often not working properly.

Of course there are many circumstances where auto on sensors are preferable to manual on but in most cases, where there is a standard light switch that is to be replaced with an occupancy sensor, manual on will usually work out better." Thank you Roger.

Getting Ready for Winter - As the days get shorter and the leaves start to change we are reminded that colder temperatures on the way. Get ready for Winter in the facilities you manage and at home with weatherization and insulation projects. See that furnaces are tuned up and filters recently changed.

Install programmable thermostats and institute a temperature control policy in your facilities (you may not get away with that at home, however!). Establish a Temperature Control Policy and lower the temperature setpoints (68° to 74° is a good range in Winter - aim for the lower end of that). Utilize temperature setbacks during unoccupied periods.

Disallow space heaters (dangerous as well as wasteful) and instead offer cold-natured employees electric foot warmers free or at a discount. Encourage people to dress appropriately for the weather.

If your buildings have motorized outside air dampers and an energy management system, see if you can close outside and relief/exhaust dampers during unoccupied periods, to prevent admittance of cold air.

Temperature Setbacks - Turning down temperature setpoints during unoccupied periods in winter (and up in summer) is a big and easy energy saver. A recent study we did for a university found that setting temps back from 70 to 55 in Winter and up from 72 to 85 in summer during unoccupied periods could save 23% on their energy bills. For a university, this is done only in academic and administrative buildings where there are no nighttime activities or on-going lab experiments that could be affected by temperature changes.