Category Archives: Project profiles

Descriptions of current and past projects

Project profile: training and support for software developer

My client here was an energy management bureau allied to a facilities maintenance company. They’re working for a retail chain with several hundred UK sites and they needed to develop not just useful energy reports for their customer’s regional managers, but also an effective method of detecting and prioritising exceptional adverse performance, so that avoidable energy waste can be spotted and remedied in a cost-effective manner.

Working on software code with the developer

We did the training in two parts, both via Zoom video link. On the Tuesday we went through the key generic principles using a pared-back version of my one-day training course on monitoring and targeting. Then on the Friday, after they’d had a chance to experiment with some data on an Excel-based toolkit, we got to grips with the software platform that they use. The screenshot shows me working with their managing director and software developer to build some of the key functionality that they will require.

Another satisfied customer

Delighted to receive this unsolicited testimonial from a client who is moving to a new job:

“Thanks so much for the fantastic service you have offered over the years.  Vesma has consistently provided [our company] with the kind of flexible, responsive service that has met our demand for an innovative approach to energy management time and again.  I will continue to recommend your training and consultancy services to others.”

Credit should go to my fellow-director Daniel Curtis who developed the innovative but simple data infrastructure we built our services on, and who was generally the front-line responder when it was needed.

Automatic metering disaster recovery

Our client relies on an extensive network of automatically-read submeters thoughout his estate and asked us to prepare a recovery manual in case his data-collection contractor should cease trading. As part of the exercise we set up a temporary online storage location, proved that the output from a typical data-logging installation can be rerouted, and established what format the data arrive in.

We are also discussing with the incumbent contractor what  additional information will need to be available in escrow to permit an orderly handover.

Bulk measurement and verification

Anyone familiar with the principles of monitoring and targeting (M&T) and measurement and verification (M&V) will recognise the overlap between the two. Both involve establishing the mathematical relationship between energy consumption and one or more independently-variable ‘driving factors’, of which one important example would be the weather expressed numerically as heating or cooling degree days.

One of my clients deals with a huge chain of retail stores with all-electric services. They are the subject of a rolling refit programme, during which the opportunity is taken to improve energy performance. Individually the savings, although a substantial percentage, are too small in absolute terms to warrant full-blown M&V. Nevertheless he wanted some kind of process to confirm that savings were being achieved and to estimate their value.

My associate Dan Curtis and I set up a pilot process dealing in the first instance with a sample of a hundred refitted stores. We used a basic M&T analysis toolkit capable of cusum analysis and regression modelling with two driving factors, plus an overspend league table (all in accordance with Carbon Trust Guide CTG008). Although historical half-hourly data are available we based our primary analysis on weekly intervals.

The process

The scheme will work like this. After picking a particular dataset for investigation, the analyst will identify a run of weeks prior to the refit and use their data establish a degree-day-related formula for expected consumption. This becomes the baseline model (note that in line with best M&V practice we talk about a ‘baseline model’ and not a baseline quantity; we are interested in the constant and coefficients of the pre-refit formula). Here is an example of a store whose electricity consumption was weakly related to heating degree days prior to its refit:

Cusum analysis using this baseline model yields a chart which starts horizontal but then turns downwards when the energy performance improves after the refit:

Thanks to the availability of half-hourly data, the M&T software can display a ‘heatmap’ chart showing half-hourly consumption before, during and after the refit. In this example it is interesting to note that savings did not kick in until two weeks after completion of the refit:

Once enough weeks have passed (as in the case under discussion) the analyst can carry out a fresh regression analysis to establish the new performance characteristic, and this becomes the target for every subsequent week. The diagram below shows the target (green) and baseline (grey) characteristics, at a future date when most of the pre-refit data points are no longer plotted:

A CTG008-compliant M&T scheme retains both the baseline and target models. This has several benefits:

  • Annual savings can be projected fairly even if the pre- or post-refit periods are less than a year;
  • The baseline model enables savings to be tracked objectively: each week’s ‘avoided energy consumption’ is the difference between actual consumption and what the baseline model yielded as an estimate (given the prevailing degree-day figures); and
  • The target model provides a dynamic yardstick for ongoing weekly consumptions. If the energy-saving measures cease to work, actual consumption will exceed what the target model predicts (again given the prevailing degree-day figures). See final section below on routine monitoring.

I am covering advanced M&T methods in a workshop on 11 September in Birmingham

A legitimate approach?

Doing measurement and verification this way is a long way off the requirements in IPMVP. In the circumstances we are talking about – a continuous pipeline of refits managed by dozens of project teams – it would never be feasible to have M&V plans for every intervention,. Among the implications of this is that no account is taken (yet) of static factors. However, the deployment of heat-map visualisations means that certain kinds of change (for example altered opening hours) can be spotted easily, and others will be evident. I would expect that with the sheer volume of projects being monitored, my client will gradually build up a repertoire of common static-factor events and their typical impact. This makes the approach essentially a pragmatic one of judging by results after the event; the antithesis of IPMVP, but much better aligned to real-world operations.

Long-term routine monitoring

The planned methodology, particularly when it comes to dealing with erosion of savings performance, relies on being able to prioritise adverse incidents. Analysts should only be investigating in depth cases where something significant has gone wrong. Fortunately the M&T environment is perfect for this,  since ranked exception reporting is one of its key features. Every week, the analyst will run the Overspend League Table report which ranks any discrepancies in descending order of apparent weekly cost:

Any important issues are therefore at the top of page 1, and a significance flag is also provided: a yellow dot indicating variation within normal uncertainty bands, and a red dot indicating unusually high deviation. Remedial effort can then be efficiently targeted, and expected-consumption formulae retuned if necessary.

Project sketch: vetting product offers

My client in this case is an international hotel brand. Individual hotels get approached by people selling questionable energy-saving products and rarely if ever have enough knowledge to defend themselves against bogus and exaggerated offers.

The company has established a core group of engineers and sustainability staff to carry out centralised vetting. My job is to provide technical advice during the initial filtering phase and to join a twice-yearly meeting to interview suppliers who are being taken further.

Project sketch: user requirement specification

Our client, a university, has a long-established metering system based on proprietary hardware with associated software for managing and interrogating the meters and storing their output for use, among other things, in a monitoring and targeting scheme. They have two major stakeholders, one predominantly interested in monitoring and managing power quality and availability, and the other in billing the various user departments. The existing scheme suffers from certain limitations and the client is considering migrating to a new data-collection provider. Continue reading Project sketch: user requirement specification

Project sketch: bulk measurement and verification

Our client in this case is a national retail chain which is continually and progressively improving its estate through the application of generic energy-saving fixes. Savings need to be measured and verified, but individual project values and expected savings are generally too low to merit  the cost of rigorous adherence to the International Performance Verification Protocol.

We are conducting a proof-of-concept study Continue reading Project sketch: bulk measurement and verification