AIR CONDITIONING, COOLING & VENTILATION


How monitoring your HVAC can help decarbonise your building


With commercial buildings responsible for almost a quarter of all carbon emissions from the UK’s built environment, we must find ways to reduce the energy used in this sector if we are to get anywhere near the nation’s Net Zero targets. That is the view of Manohar Lal, controls specialist at Mitsubishi Electric


A


nd that is where modern methods of monitoring and controlling the equipment used to keep these buildings comfortable places to work, rest and play, can make a


real difference. The UK’s temperate climate demands some


form of heating, ventilation and increasingly air conditioning yet the HVAC systems providing this heating and cooling account for around 25% of the built environment’s carbon footprint, so finding ways of lowering the emissions from this HVAC equipment must be a priority. Increasing energy efficiency by lowering


energy usage is a good place to start. However, it’s important to remember you can’t reduce what you don’t measure. It can be a struggle to understand where and how energy is being used in buildings – making it difficult to control and lower overall carbon emissions as a result.


This is where advanced HVAC monitoring systems can improve the situation by increasing this understanding to allow building owners and facilities managers to identify high energy output by tracking and monitoring energy usage. This can then be used to help amend operational schedules to increase efficiency. Further analysis can then help inform whether a simple retrofit to install a more renewable alternative such as heat pumps or an entire refurbishment is needed to reduce energy usage further and lowering emissions in the future.


Significant progress is already being made


The Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES), is soon likely to require all commercial buildings to have an EPC rating of ‘B’ by 2030 – up from ‘E’ from when the legislation was initially enacted in 2016.


At the moment, there are estimated to be


around 85% of the 1.75 million commercial buildings in the UK that are currently below a ‘B’ rating. This means that there are a lot of properties in danger of becoming a ‘stranded asset’ that cannot be let and which will fail to reach its sales potential.


Most owners of these buildings are already aware of the dangers to their assets and are looking for ways to ensure their buildings are ready for regulations which will demand a reduction in energy use.


HVAC monitoring can reduce energy usage


HVAC monitoring is one way we can reduce energy usage in commercial buildings. These systems work by collecting data on the energy consumed by HVAC equipment alongside other components such as temperature and humidity. In doing so, they continuously track and report on energy consumption and performance. This allows building owners and managers to identify and analyse areas of high energy usage and take steps to actively reduce them – whether that’s by optimising existing equipment or looking to upgraded to energy-efficient alternatives. Modern energy monitoring platforms can also record the energy consumption of third- party equipment, alongside HVAC equipment, allowing for a wider overview of energy usage in a building. This can then be displayed on an energy dashboard, allowing building owners and operators to monitor and compare the energy consumption of multiple buildings by ranking their usage by kW per hour per building size or by the number of temperature or consumption alerts.


Monitoring also allows operators to compare


energy consumption between buildings, floors, rooms and individual HVAC units, room by room or all the way up to entire estates. Using this data, the monitoring platform can then help prevent a single or multiple systems within a building from exceeding set temperature points reducing energy wastage; for example,


8 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER JULY 2024 Read the latest at: www.bsee.co.uk


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