Let me tell a story without naming names. I believe it to be very typical for the Ontario market. Some business was convinced they had the most energy efficient operations in the world. Why wouldn't they be if they had installed energy-efficient equipment provided by the reputable vendor? However, an old owner had a [...]
A conventional wisdom suggests that only action creates results. I tend to agree, except that is must be a correct action. How do you what energy project is the right one? How to choose between projects when each vendor claims attractive savings? I do not have a crystal ball either, but I [...]
Simple payback is a misleading financial ratio. Conventional wisdom says that short payback is a sign of a better project. Wrong. The goal of an investment is not to get your money back, but to make invested money make more money with minimum risk. Simple payback does not even consider risk of not getting money [...]
Every time I hear somebody say "project saved $123,456" I look if person's nose has grown a bit. Obviously such person does not understand the first thing about savings: energy savings is consumption that did not happen, nobody can measure something that did not happened. Energy savings are never exact, always an estimate. Always. [...]
When assessing energy savings, the use of math is not a substitute to engineering common sense. Math is an enhancement tool: if engineer has made in error – math will not correct it; math will make it bigger. Never mind just calculations, statistical analysis or even artificial intelligence, if result does not make engineering [...]
When a baseline built over a certain period has R2=95%, it means that baseline formula accurately predicts actual consumption in 95% of the time during this period. This does NOT mean that there were no changes during this period. The wrongly predicted 5% of data points may be measurement noise or data collection error [...]
Calculating energy savings results is like keeping a golf score. If you ever been on the green, understanding the meaning of CUSUM will come easy. Baseline - how machine is supposed to work or worked before retrofit - is a par. CUSUM - a cumulative sum of deviations from baseline - is a score. If [...]
To M&V or not to M&V - this is the question If you are in charge of energy at your manufacturing or commercial facility, you are likely to be addressed by vendors with various energy efficiency improvements proposals. It can be a more efficient machine or a tune-up or an addition to your existing system. [...]
A proper answer to this seemingly simple question is nothing but simple. Proper measurement and verification of achieved savings is a key factor when calculating payback period, IRR for an investment into energy efficiency project and any other in-company ratio. Effectively, M&V may mean a difference between energy efficiency project being named [...]
