Energy bills are among the most significant overheads for the majority of schools due to the specific nature of educational activities. School buildings have to maintain a constant temperature throughout the day, while heating or cooling systems have to be switched on or off early, so that the desire set point temperature is reached by the time pupils go into their classrooms.
Nevertheless, the energy bill for most buildings can be reduced by 10-20 % by implementing a range of sensible energy efficiency improvements that produce quick financial returns, without compromising the comfort of staff and students.
Besides the obvious economic benefits (releasing funds for curricular resources or facilities), there are social and environmental advantages to reducing energy consumption, such as preserving fossil fuels and minimising impact on the environment. This is increasingly important to the reputation of schools, as students, teachers and parents become increasingly aware of climate change.
Furthermore, by taking active steps to reduce their overall energy expenditure and bills, schools will also provide an excellent opportunity for pupils to be practically involved in responsible management of energy as a valuable resource, helping them to understand how everyday actions impact on the environment.
Carefully manage the heating start time
Traditional time clocks set the heating to come on at a particular time. Some are a ‘24 hour clock’ and cannot vary the times throughout the week wasting fuel at weekends, when school classrooms, offices and other buildings are unoccupied. Even a 7 day clock cannot cater for Bank Holidays, Holidays, shut downs or periods when the building is empty.
However, a Building Energy Management System will enable facilities managers and building administrators to set room temperatures to suit how you they run their buildings, giving them 100% control of the heating and cooling to meet their needs in summer, winter or throughout the year.
Most BEMS solutions nowadays are controlled via advanced software interfaces that enable users to superimpose patterns of building usage onto the heating/cooling patterns to perfectly match so that the energy usage is minimized. Often, this means the heating will be warm in the morning when teachers and pupils people first arrive and then slightly cooler during the day when everyone is in the classrooms.
This accurate method of matching heating or cooling to building usage keeps students comfortable and can saves the school money, reducing bills by between 10% and 30%+.
Boiler switch-on time
Most heating time clocks are set for the coldest days in winter to turn on the school’s boilers so that rooms are warm when pupils come in. They do so irrespective of the outside temperature, simply because it do not know it. However, a BEMS that also received temperature data from sensors placed outside and inside the buildings can determine the absolute latest time to switch on the boiler or supply heat for the rooms to be warm upon staff and students’ arrival.
Equally, the system can switch off the boiler early on warm days at the end of the heating period.
Use automatic occupancy to prevent unnecessary heating
Normally associated to burglar alarms, occupancy sensors can actually provide some impressive energy savings when connected to a building energy management system. They can prompt the BEMS to automatically turn the heating down when nobody is present within a specific room and back up when teachers and students arrive and need to be warm.
Flow and return temperatures
Most boilers have a flow and return pipe carrying the heated water to the radiators and hot water cylinder(s). There should be several degrees difference between these for the boiler heat exchangers to work efficiently.
A Building Energy Management System will monitors the flow and return temperature, adjusting the boiler temperature to keep the boiler running efficiently and avoid wasting fuel.
Preventing Dry Cycling
The Phenomenon of dry cycling occurs when the thermostat turns on a boiler for a very short time, not giving the boiler a chance to fire up properly or if the boiler dial is set too low. BEMS software will automatically controls the heating and knows the operating characteristics of a particular boiler(s) to run them efficiently, preventing dry cycling which wastes fuel and puts undue wear on the boiler.
Replacing Old Fashioned Thermostats
Most school buildings have thermostats both on their boilers and in rooms and offices. They are crude devices often based upon an expanding piece of metal. The difference between a thermostat and a modern Building Energy Management System (BEMS) is that the BEMS system will monitor the climbing room temperature via dedicated sensors and switch off the heat, using the residual heat within the boiler, to reach the correct room temperature.
Thermostats can’t do this and always overshoot the temperature wasting fuel and sometimes causing discomfort, while also oscillating greater around the desired temperature causing more fuel to be used than is necessary.
Room Temperature Set Points Matched to Outside Temperature
Have you ever noticed that whether you feel uncomfortably hot or cold is NOT dependent solely upon the actual temperature? For example, in a room at 19.5°C you might feel too cold in winter when it’s cold outside and your body core temperature is low, but might feel too warm on a sunny autumn day when your core temperature is warmer.
To compensate for this phenomenon, a Building Energy Management System can vary the room set-point temperature automatically depending upon the outside temperature, keeping staff and students comfortable and saving the organisation money.
Sharing information with pupils and staff
Sharing data generated by the BEMS software with pupils and school staff will help encourage and reward ideas and activities which will reduce energy use.
In fact, teachers can bring energy information into lesson plans, engaging pupils with meter readings, energy management statistics and comparisons of numerical data. This will help them not only to improve numeracy skills but also to develop their own understanding of energy and how it is used, an understanding which can go on to influence longer term behaviour both at school and in the home.
Tensor Plc
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