Thursday, March 5, 2009

Defining energy efficiency

I received the follow in an email chain and want to share it with you.

These types of misconception about energy efficiency are everywhere, hopefully this brief presentation will help shed some light on the subject.

We have a very interesting debate going on at the moment.  The issue is how a company should measure its overall energy efficiency savings, should they use energy intensities, indicator benchmarks, or total energy reduction.  From an M&V point of view we are quite clear on it, but there is quite uncertainty in the market on how it should be done.

 

You have one school that supports energy intensity.  Duirng the past few years with the economic boom they ran maximum production.  This reduced the energy intensities and they were claiming energy efficiency.  Now with the drop in production they are all operating at higher energy intensities, thus they have "lost all energy efficiency". 

 

The other schools look at overall energy use, and now they are claiming "savings"???

 

Attached is a presentation I made to try and illustrate to them how energy efficiency savings should be determined.  I hope you find this interesting.



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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director