Energy efficiency
Intelligent and tailored energy management
Effectively meeting the challenge of efficient energy consumption might best be achieved by using one intelligent energy management system that is specifically tailored to the business’s requirements, says managing director of the Vickers Energy Group, David Hilton
in industry is becoming more and more important in terms of both costs, which are constantly rising, as well as corporate social responsibility on businesses to play their part in reducing industry’s carbon foot- print. It’s vital that HVAC profes- sionals are aware of energy effi- ciency and can advise accordingly. Whether it’s updating clients on the most budget savvy ways to reduce their energy consumption or your own business wants to reduce its costs, now is the time to be making changes.
In commercial buildings, man- aging energy usage efficiently can be particularly difficult. No two sites are the same and each one has its own specific needs and challenges. Issues that arise on sites include excessive waste and large-scale energy usage in huge buildings and warehouses. With large spaces and areas that need different temperatures, it can be hard to maintain all of these effectively without wasting unnecessary energy and money. The Government’s Climate Change Act of 2007 led to various initiatives targeted at businesses to help them reduce the UK’s carbon and greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. As part of this it’s never been more important for businesses to get on board by reducing energy usage, particularly with the incentives and pressure to consider corporate social responsibility.
Starting the process of reducing
energy consumption can be a daunting prospect. Many compa- nies don’t know how to correctly analyse their energy consumption or understand their bills. They may also not have the resources to implement an analysis of what needs to be actioned in order to reduce consumption and reduce budgets. When predicting energy usage, many businesses ignore the varying temperatures across differ- ent seasons and use one energy setting for the building across the whole year, resulting in excessive
26 | September 2014 | HVR
Vickers has worked with Stagecoach since 2004
energy waste during the summer months.
Some buildings use a single switch to control heating and ventilation, which doesn’t allow variation across the different areas of the building. However maintain- ing different areas manually can be labour intensive and result in high costs. An energy management system allows companies to control a huge range of areas in different ways, with one system to monitor and regulate heating throughout the building, using weather predictions and sensors to maintain the correct temperatures. Vickers Energy Group manages the system for their customers, meaning energy efficiency can become low maintenance and cost effective. The complex system is tailored to each business’s energy requirements, looking at their cur- rent fuel consumption and system. Vickers has worked with many companies such as Stagecoach, RAF Cosford Museum, Regatta and Caterpillar, helping to maintain energy efficient heating in their buildings and warehouses. The most effective way to meet the challenge of efficient energy consumption is by using one intel- ligent energy management system that is specifically tailored to the business’s requirements.
This allows companies to con- trol a huge range of areas, making sure each zone is the correct tem- perature. The system monitors and regulates temperature throughout
Vickers Energy Group has been accepted by the Carbon Trust for its ‘Accredited Supplier’ scheme and has recently been awarded a ‘Gold Green Apple Award’ by the Green Organisation, and ‘Green Business of the Year’ at the Trafford Business Awards.
a building without the need for manual intervention. We’ve worked with our customers to help them address issues with their energy systems. Many of them struggled to find an effective way to maintain efficient energy consumption so we look at how we can help each individual customer.
On average, we’ve saved our customers 43 per cent of their carbon emissions, proving how important an effective system is. As energy prices rise, we know many companies are looking for new ways to address the costly bills so we’re hoping to provide them with some advice. Vickers has worked with Stagecoach since 2004, providing a hi-tech energy management system which controls heating and lighting across the companies 100 depots in the UK.
In 2011, Stagecoach further committed to the Vickers system which now allows the group to improve monitoring and control of its gas heating system through the introduction of control panels with remote access management which provides greater reliability and less waste, and is controlled remotely by Vickers.
Results show that the technolo- gy has helped Stagecoach save 55,000 tonnes of CO2 in the past
10 years – the equivalent of the emissions produced by powering 22,000 homes for a year. Overall, the energy usage has been cut by 50 per cent and Stagecoach has saved over £7.8m in energy bills. Managing Director of Stagecoach UK Bus Robert Montgomery spoke of their energy savings: “We’ve invested signifi- cantly in this system and we are really starting to see the benefits now in terms of the energy sav- ings, and the knock-on financial savings, that it is delivering across out operations. Sustainability is at the heart of our operations and we are continuing to implement new measures to help cut our carbon footprint and encourage more people on to our greener, smarter bus and rail services.”
David Hilton said on the rela- tionship with Stagecoach: “We’ve been working with Stagecoach for 10 years and are immensely proud of the dramatic carbon and finan- cial savings we have delivered. The newly installed system is controlled remotely and testament to the strong results that the initial system produced, and our ongoing advances in this area. We work very closely with the team at Stagecoach to deliver the right results for it and are proud to be part of its plans to reduce carbon emissions for its transport operations.”
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