Environmental Studies Class Journal - Case Study Example

Journal Objectives of this are to evaluate and analyze energy management and energy conservation issues, identify and understand the value of energy management, identify and understand the principles of energy management, and explore the career opportunities in the energy field. Energy production is responsible for 35% of US CO2 emissions and 33% of NOX emissions and other atmospheric issues that have big impacts on the environment as a whole. Yet electricity is still needed for a lot of the things we do even if we learn much better ways to conserve energy. It would be helpful if we could shut down some of the less efficient plants, even if we can't close all of them. Natural gas is one of the state's largest source of energy and only 10% of the state's energy comes from renewables, mostly geothermals followed by biomass, wind, and solar. Economic analyses are decision-making tools for energy projects and techniques to choose among a number of different options. They do not include the benefit to the environment, the benefit to society, or whether you're being a good neighbor. Objectives for this unit are to understand that these analyses can range from simple to complex, be able to review and understand assumptions, be familiar with the limits, and be able to run through example calculations. Types of economic analyses include rough order of magnitude estimates for budget purposes (ROM), Simple payback, and Internal rate of return (IRR). These are used both on new building projects and retrofits. Investment decision types involved in analyses include to accept or reject a single project or system operation, to select an optimal efficiency level for a building system, select an optimal system type from competing alternatives, select an optimal combination of interdependent systems, and/or rank competing projects to allocate a limited budget. Assumptions are everything. They define the project and state the objectives, they establish first cost, cost of energy, cost of labor and materials, cost of maintenance, cost of money, tax credits, and inflation. You need to know where they came from, which ones are solid as compared to guesses, and how to adjust when solid numbers are available. To get an idea of how to do this, we looked at the simple payback analysis. The equation is simple payback (in years) = cost divided by savings where the cost is the cost of the project in dollars and the savings are annual energy savings in dollars. In comparing options, you subtract the cost of one benefit over the other. For cost, you should list the assumptions and the sources you used to reach that number, then use the cost difference between the different options. Do the same thing for savings, convert all units to dollars per year. We looked at a refrigerator analysis as an example in which the simple payback was about one and a half years. Then we looked at the example of a water heater which included more complex variables. These two examples really helped demonstrate the important role played by the assumptions that effects the overall solution. The example with the compact fluorescent bulbs showed how to use the spreadsheet program to help us work out the details and allows us to change the variables when we need to, for example if an assumption has changed. After the break, we looked at an online tool that would do these analyses which showed why it's important for us to be able to check these figures for ourselves and then moved on to talk about energy action plans. The second half of class looked at an energy action plan. This was accomplished by looking at the specific example of Stanford University. He talked about the importance of knowing the location, getting management interested, getting the users involved, the maintenance people involved, and performing the energy audit from a variety of perspectives. Things that were important in this section were involving maintenance, the design team, the issue of capital improvement, non-stop measurement, and sustainability. Lecture 2 Class started with a quick review of the things we talked about last time when we focused on the basics of energy economics and developing an energy action plan. The energy action plan includes partnerships, education, awareness, scheduling, maintenance, resourceful design, capital improvements, energy retrofit and non-stop measurement. All these things need to be done together to be fully effective, shows that this is a well thought-out plan. Discussing energy balance, the term was defined as a mathematical relationship, using the principle of the conservation of energy, that shows the energy inputs and outputs of a process or system. Earth has an energy balance with the sun but we can also look at it at a national scale to get an idea of where the energy comes from and where it flows and how we use it. We can bring it down to more local flows such as the campus or the body. Spend the energy on the biggest energy users and get an idea of how much energy you need plus when you're using it to meet the loads. Vocabulary to remember includes energy as the ability to do work, power reflects something available on instant demand such as energy by the watt (W) or kilowatt (kW). Energy reflects power times time by the watt hour (Wh) or kilowatt hour (kWh) and is how we're charged by how much demand for how much power do we make. We went through the concepts of peak time and off peak time and why that's important to us as consumers and within the energy field. He explained how to read a detailed bill for a resident as compared to a commercial business. Using the energy bills from similar properties with similar attributes (number of occupants, types of uses, etc.), is one way to make energy assumptions. Looking again at the different types of analyses, there are also a number of different investment decision types that you may need to prepare for - accept or reject a single project or system option, select an optimal efficiency level for a building system, select an optimal system type from competing alternatives, select an optimal combination of interdependent systems, rank competing projects to allocate a limited budget. Again, though, assumptions are the key for others to make these decisions. Good thing about simple payback is everyone understands it. Moving onto life-cycle cost, this refers to the total cost of owning, operating, and maintaining a system over its useful lifetime. These costs are adjusted for time value of money and the alternative with the lowest life-cycle cost is the best choice. Life-cycle costs include first costs and recurring costs. First costs include the design and the construction. Recurring costs include annual costs of utilities and maintenance and non-annual costs of replacements. This method of analysis considers the time value of money which refers to factors of inflation and opportunity cost. Inflation is the erosion of future purchasing power and opportunity cost refers to foregone investment opportunities and the cost of borrowing capital or how much that money might change in value over time. Unlike simple payback, these are difficult to do within a simple spreadsheet format. Instead, we usually create an energy model where an example building is created in a computer model and the building is described in detail. Important modeling components include set objectives, site and weather, building shell, operations and scheduling, internal loads, HVAC equipment, utility rates, and economic parameters. To integrate the beginning of a project LCCA with an energy action plan, you have to consider the goals by evaluating the economic performance over the building's life, balance the initial investment (first costs) with the long term ownership expense. You'd also have to look at the benefits. Over the building's life, the present value of maintenance, operations, and utility costs are nearly as great as the initial project costs; designing buildings with ownership costs in mind can result in significant savings over the building's life. LCCA is not synonymous with sustainability, it is cost based rather than subjective. Life-cycle benefit is going to be found in mechanical elements, things like that. Need to develop operation benchmarking, comparative analysis of six general categories - energy, mechanical systems, electrical systems, building envelop, building siting/mapping, structured systems. Class finished with an introduction to an online tool to help with life-cycle analysis. LCCA process is establish objectives, determine LCCA metrics and criteria, identify and develop alternatives, gather cost information, perform LCCA calculations. Schematic design is where you start to solidify things and select the cost-effective alternatives based on the results and design development is where you review the assumptions. Then, after you've checked everything, you move into construction documents, construction, and closeout/occupancy. Lecture 3 Class started with the usual review of what we've done and then went into an introduction to the U.S. Green Building Council and LEED group who created a recognized rating system that incorporates many of the things that we've already talked about in this class. Green design includes sustainable site planning, safeguarding water and water efficiency, energy efficiency and renewable energy, conservation of materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. Benefits of green building are environmental, economic, health and safety benefits, and community benefits. Economic benefits include competitive first costs, reduce operating costs, and optimize life-cycle economic performance. Productivity benefits include improved occupant performance, reduced absenteeism and turnover, increased retail sales with daylighting. Examples of these were discussed as well. LEED was created to facilitate positive results for the environment, occupant health and financial return, define 'green' by providing a standard for measurement, prevent 'greenwashing', and to promote whole-building, integrated design processes. From here, we discussed various things that LEED affected, changes that have happened since LEED and some examples, licensing and certification. After the break, we talked a little about what else could be expected from the course and then started to talk about how to look into the sources of energy. For example, in using corn oil as a form of fuel for energy, there are studies that show that corn is an inefficient use of resources for the energy he gives. As someone in the class said, this represents a life-cycle analysis in which it shows that all things considered, growing corn for fuel takes up more resources than it provides. Then we switched topics again to look at the building envelop, getting ready for the next class and some examples that helped to provide visuals of what we're talking about. Key considerations of building envelop issues is that they have to be addressed at the earliest part of the schematic design process and resolved long before construction begins. Remember that loads for commercial, industrial, and residential buildings are all different in order to appropriately consider the building energy balance. Thermal comfort refers to the condition of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment. Building orientation to the sun has a significant effect on the building structure which may be limited by the size/orientation of the lot. With daylighting, admit only as much light as is necessary and consider sky conditions and glare control. Daylight dimming controls can save a lot of energy and reduce heat loads. Glazing is a key ingredient in making this work. This led to a discussion of a number of examples and how to do skylighting which brought out the concepts of altitude angle and azimuth angle again. Weather also has an important effect on a building. You need to know the difference between climate, which is more general regional data, and weather, which is more specific. Thinking about building, you think about climate, but thinking about use and energy needs, you need to consider weather. We can address some of these issues by looking at features that were critical for comfort before mechanical cooling was available, such as arcades or the stack effect. Class ended by looking at a number of different types of buildings and how they functioned to help keep things cool without mechanics. Using some of these techniques enables you to reduce energy consumption simply by taking advantage of the climate and weather to that specific site. Not all of these techniques are fully transferrable without additional adjustments or more sophisticated automated control features. Read More