Ragheed Santina | PMP| MEL Candidate | Dec 17, 2021.
Mentor: Divya Gupta, RDCO;
Abstract
RDCO (Regional district of central Okanagan) is making some efforts on climate action to make their infrastructure and communities greener, reducing regional reliance on continued emergency management activations and supporting the region’s ability to thrive over time.
One of the initiatives that RDCO is considering is to reduce their energy consumption in all their buildings. To do that, they want to explore the opportunity of having a centralized control system. The purpose of this study is to check the economics of having a centralized control system. The study will cover one of their buildings which is the administration building. Based on the results, scaling for other buildings will be considered.
The internet of things and several smart technologies in lighting, HVAC, plug loads, and window shading systems will be addressed to reduce building energy consumption and improve building operations. A smart building prototype will be proposed with the capital cost, energy savings, and the payback period required for each system.
Introduction
The Administration building of RDCO is located at 1450 KLO Road, Kelowna, BC. The building was built in 1967 and had a total floor area of 46700 ft2 (4,339 m2). The building receives natural gas from FortisBC which is used for spacing heating and domestic hot water.
Regarding the Electrical energy consumption, it is also received from Fortis BC, and the current electricity commercial services cost is approximately $ 0.0728 / KWH. The electrical energy consumption was measured to be 585,440 KWH during the 12-month period of 2019, which equates to approximately $ 42,590.76 at the current rate.
The year 2019 was considered a baseline to give a realistic approach to gas consumption and electricity consumption because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Objective
Below are the objectives required for the project:
- Identify potential problems related to energy efficiency and conservation in the administration building.
- Implement a centralized control system using IoT.
- Utilize energy Efficiency technologies to reduce energy consumption.
- Identify if the system is feasible and can be scaled to other buildings.
Methodology
The methodology used for the study can be summarized in the following steps.
Results and Discussion
Installing the lighting system requires the highest investment (39% of the total capital cost). Automated window shade comes second and is also expensive to install (31%). Adding a control system for the HVAC system comes third (24%) and the least is the plug loads (6%).
The highest payback system is 7.7 years which is for the automated window shades and the lowest is for the plug loads with 3.6 years. Taking the whole building into consideration. The simple payback period is 6 years. The lighting system has the highest annual savings with 5837.5 $/year and plug loads have the lowest annual savings with 1312 $/year.
After all the retrofits are installed, the annual consumption in lighting has decreased by 123,797 kWh/year which is around 69 %. The energy consumption in plug loads has decreased by 18,067 kWh/year and the energy consumption in the HVAC system has decreased by 34,496 kWh. The total energy consumption has decreased by a total of 176,259 kWh/year which is around 30 % of the total annual energy consumption before adding the retrofits.
Conclusion
The economics done on the administration building shows that RDCO can reduce a lot of energy consumption in their building for a payback period of around 6 years. The study implies that scaling up the project for the other buildings owned by RDCO can have a lot of gain in terms of energy consumption and cost savings making the buildings greener with low carbon emissions especially since the amount of electricity used is decreased. Adding a common control room will also help to organize and improve the workflows and to take the proper decisions based on feedback collected using a large amount of data. Finally, a centralized control system will promote occupant comfort and convenience and will enhance building value.
Contact
Ragheed Santina
Project Engineer
ragheedsantina07@gmail.com