Can you offer some real-world examples of building efficiency successes you ’ ve achieved for clients ?
DK : I ’ ve been lucky enough to work on MBCx projects on a few different CSU and UC campuses , where we ’ ve been able to save anywhere between 15 % and 35 % of the energy usage . One of the first MBCx projects I ever managed was the Arts and Letters building at San Diego State University . Across the board , we managed to save 35 % of building energy consumption . This was very interesting because it was a relatively new building . So to still save over a third of the energy on a newish building was pretty eyeopening for the campus . This project also won an award from the CSU system for the best MBCx project during its completed year .
How can owners qualify for utility incentives ?
DK : There are generally two types of utility incentives . There are prescriptive incentives , which are pre-qualified for certain types of equipment that owners replace or optimize . We usually don ’ t go for those for MBCx , we go for the custom programs where they stipulate a dollar value per unit of energy saved , and that ’ s what they ’ ll pay out in incentives . The way MBCx projects typically work , owners get the utilities involved upfront and apply for the custom MBCx program . The utilities have to accept you into the program before any work begins . After they give owners a tentative acceptance , that ’ s when they ’ ll tell the utilities what they plan to do , and they ’ ll accept it incrementally . First , they ’ ll accept your baseline and then the recommendations . Utilities want to ensure that the incentive enables actions that owners wouldn ’ t have taken otherwise . The final step is to prove what the process has done to save energy . Only after all this has been said and done do the utilities pay out the incentive . Owners still have to front all costs before receiving any money back from the utility . Some owners have a revolving green fund that they use to fund these projects , and then they put the incentive checks back into that fund to use for future upgrades . made . Also , if an operator leaves and a new one comes in , and there wasn ’ t good documentation of the optimization that was done , they could start making changes from not knowing what was done before . A few years down the road , the energy use is back to where it was before . The best bet for owners is to work with the energy solutions provider to make sure there ’ s clear documentation of what ’ s been done so that their operators can continue to keep the building running at peak performance .
That ’ s one of our deliverables as an energy solutions provider ; we give them a training guide and a presentation . The presentation will explain what the building systems are , how they operated before , what the recommendations were and why and what they can do long term to continue maintaining these systems . We also give owners a list of things that they can check if they start to see certain things happening , which allows them to troubleshoot their systems . Current control systems automate a lot of these maintenance issues . They have automatic fault-detection systems to help automate fixes and make things even easier . In the near future , even more of these controls will be automated where owners can implement fixes , and the system can alert them when things start to go wrong and automatically repair .
If owners follow the documentation , if there are no changes in building use and the weather stays relatively constant , there ’ s no reason a building can ’ t continue to perform near peak indefinitely . However , the reality is that all components have a life cycle . As things start to fail , owners will see some degradation in performance . There ’ s ongoing systems maintenance that needs to be done , and then parts have to be replaced at the end of their useful life . And there are always changes happening in the real world , building uses do change , the weather is hardly ever constant . The best bet is for owners to be proactive in maintaining their systems and adapting to building use .
Finally , how do owners keep their facilities running at peak efficiency and performance levels ?
DK : As part of the MBCx process , we have to make sure that we ’ re clearly explaining to the building operators what we ’ re doing and why we ’ re doing it . This allows them to safeguard the long-term implementation of energy efficiency measures . If this isn ’ t clearly explained to the operators , operators will make their own changes because they didn ’ t understand why a prior efficiency change was
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Issue 04 / 2021