The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) extends its deep thanks to the enthusiasm and valuable cooperation of ETES in the process of joining the project of Special LED System installation for offshore fishing ships in Quang Tri

The 40th anniversary of National Union in Quang Tri Province

Mr. Nguyen Quan Chinh, Vice Chairman, People's Committee of Quang Tri Province came to visit the site of LED installation.

Energy Audit and new trends

FRIday - 07/04/2017 22:07 - Viewed: 5395

Energy Audit and new trends
The Energy Audit is of the same importance as Financial Audit. It is a huge waste of energy when we use it in an inefficient way.

Inevitable trend
Sustainable use of energy is considered to be the trend of 21^st century. After bringing the issue into global discussion of Emission Reduction, saving water, forest protection…. all over the world, people suddenly realizes the fact that an considerable amount of energy is consumed day by day by many equipments in our own house.
What should we do to make our house more “green”? Turnoff the lights, fan, air conditioner….?
It is energy audit - the indispensable first step on the progress of “ improving the situation” and lead to future of a green world.

Energy audit has been around since 1970s in period of energy crisis . This time ,not many businesses interested in this issue because of financial difficulties in applying improvement methods . But recently, energy audit is being re-interested due to cost reduction pressure, trend of sustainable use of energy and Government support programs. Not only organizations but also residents make their house designs are geared toward using energy more efficiently. The simple reason, beside environmental things, is lowering cost of using energy each month. To solve problem of cost and increase efficiency, Home cheap energy audit services, Self energy audits, Virtual energy audits and Real-time auditing is now becoming new trends in many developed countries.

Energy audit
Energy audit is to calculate amount of energy consumption of a construction work, a production process or system….in order to find the waste causing factors to avoid and to increase efficiency of energy usage. Duties of Auditors including inspection, survey and analysis of energy flows, evaluate energy consumption, identify areas of energy waste and recommend best ways to save and improve energy efficiency. Large businesses usually use audit service of professional organization, spend several hundred hours and big amount of cost, but for a personal or family house, it only need 1-2 hours, few hundred dollars, they even can do it by themselves, no cost.

Basic Energy Audit Process:
       -      Research field work: architecture description, operating equipments, Management- operation
              method, managing devices, current energy measurement system .
-       Pre-planning: Estimate time, budget , manpower, collect information and decide working method.
-       Data collection: From drawings, energy performance diagram, energy bills of latest 2-3 years and existing metering data
-       Data analysis : to assess the yearly electric power consumption
-       Electric power consumption calculation : including BPI, BEI, AEI, LPI, LEI…..
-       Identify energy-saving opportunities: Consider solution can be apply for outer part, electricity system, conditioner system, light system,…
-       Evaluation of investment cost and payback time: base on the data collected, calculate the saving energy and cost of each solution. The rate between sum investment cost and energy saving shows the payback time.
-       Suitable solution recommendation : priority to choose the solution that free or low cost audit to reduce risks.

Many options for energy audit
Home cheap audit service: While businesses are getting trouble with energy audit cost, the low cost home energy audit is becoming more popular. With affordable cost and simple procedures, many individual customers entered the market segment that only for business customers before. Energy auditors visit your house, see the energy bills and make list of equipments, collect data by specialized tools such as Thermographic infrared Inspection to detect thermal defects and leakage in building envelopes…… Finally, make an audit report of found problems and recommended improvement measures. Now in American, all the process just take 1-2 hours and cost no more than 200 USD, but the solution measures can help saving more than 30% yearly energy cost.

Using Thermographic infrared inspections

The display on the device show the place need to fix.

Real-time auditing: This could probably be the future of energy audit. Professors from The University of Texas and Singapore Institute of Technology have developed an approach to track the daily energy usage of individual machine in real time by placing sensors inside the machine. The data from the sensors will be fed into a mathematical model called a finite-state machine (FSM), which is commonly used for analyzing manufacturing processes.

Virtual energy Audit: the method that audit is conducted base on calculation and analysis of the model, to reduce audit cost. Virtual energy auditors will not visit each house, apartments, factories….to do measurement, they just analyze and recommend solution base on the provided data. Data may include electric bills, architecture drawings, system drawings…..that existing. The advanced method and model make the acceptable accuracy result calculation. This type of energy audit is popular for businesses because of low cost and just take few minutes.

Real time audit help to take the action of improvement almost immediately. For example, manager can realize and then switch off a power wasting lights.
Automation level and accuracy can also be enhanced. Theoretically, the model could be used to monitor many different types of machines in any industry. The study was published on the Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control journal with title “Classification of energy consumption patterns for energy audit and machine scheduling in industrial manufacturing systems”

Self-Audit: While the energy audit service becoming a hot business, many training course for both pro and not professional auditors are also blooming. You can stay at home, finish an online audit training course and become an independent auditor. You can do the energy audit for your house by yourself to save time and cost.

First, collect energy bills of latest years, compare month by month to find the energy usage trend. Next step, after seeing the figures, is to walk through your house, check the potential energy wasting place and makeup solutions. Sometime, it’s simple like to fill the gap between ceiling and wall, replace with low-voltage bulbs or clean the fridge…
Just simple thing but bring long term benefit.
More and more people now are realizing that energy audit is the first-stable step to build a healthy and comfortable living environment in the future.