Out of Hours Energy Walkthrough

If your air-conditioning or heating did not operate during the day, when the building is occupied, you would soon be made aware of the problem, find out about plant not running when it should is easy. But how would you know if the same plant was running when it shouldn't be? This is where the night energy walkthrough brings a benefit.

​

What are you looking to achieve?

The objective is to walkthrough your facility, visiting all of your energy consuming equipment, and using all of your senses identify plant and equipment that is operating. The objective during the walkthrough is not to understand if it should be operating, simply the fact that it is. While it pays to have a plan of where you want to visit and which equipment you are interested in it is sensible to be guided by your senses, what can you hear, perhaps airflow or machinery noise. What lighting are you encountering that is on? Are the radiators hot? Take a look at the building from the outside, what floors can you see lighting still on?

​

Timing

The timing of your visit is important,  you want to visit the building at a time when you would expect the facility to be least populated, when the least amount of plant and equipment should be required to support building users. If analysis of your interval data suggests that your baseload is significantly different at out of core business hours during the week compared to weekend hours it may be worth conducting a walkthrough during a sample of each period.

​

Walkthrough attendees

The best walkthroughs are a product of a joint visit, with a non-technical person, thinking from a business or sustainability perspective, and being curious as to why equipment is running. Ideally they would be accompanied by a maintenance technician, to facilitate safe access to plant spaces, which can be dangerous for those unfamiliar with such environments. Another role of the technician is to answer the simple queries of what a particular piece of equipment that is running is called.

​

Walkthrough output

By the end of the walkthrough you are aiming to have compiled a list equipment found running, with the following detail: equipment name (ideally as stated in the equipment label, ie AHU No7), location, time found running.

​

Post visit review

Your newly compiled list should be reviewed with your building maintenance team and a line by line review conducted to determine for each item:

a) should it have been running

b) if not what will be done to rectify the situation

c) if by design / time schedule it is correct that the equipment was running, the question then becomes whether this is still necessary or can we optimize the operating hours, if so what is required?

​

Having completed the review you will likely have some immediate wins and some items for further investigation, however each line item, excluding those determined as having been running entirely correctly with no opportunity for betterment, should be treated as part of your energy conservation pipeline. This does not mean that every item will result in an energy saving, simply they should be explored through to a point where an option for resolution can be evaluated and either implemented or accepted as not suitable for implementation at this time.