Park Lane office regains control of energy use
When KCE FM won the facilities-management contract for an office building in London’s Park Lane, one of the immediate tasks was to reduce energy consumption and enhance comfort. With the help of the existing Trend BMS, energy costs for 49 Park Lane were reduced by over 21% compared with the same period a year earlier.
David Smith, technical supervisor with CE, explains, ‘We knew that at Trend BEMS was in-situ and that achieving our objectives would depend upon this technology working as efficiently as possible.’
Gemco Environmental Control Services, a Trend Systems Integrator, was called in. Although the BEMS was generally in good condition, bad operational habits had crept in.
Chris Thorne, the company’s strategic development director, explains, ‘We went back to basics by correcting the previous variable-speed-drive settings. We then evaluated the occupancy settings, changing the AHU demand strategy for varying supply and extract pressures at different times. The system was running at a given hertz level [i.e. speed] on the drive instead of using pressure feedback. This meant that it provided a constant supply of heat that was not determined by occupancy. We have reprogrammed it so that the speed of the motor on the AHU varies at specific times.’
David Smith says, ‘We have made an electricity saving of 13.87% on units used against the same period last year. This represents a total cost saving of 21.45%, which equates to many thousands of pounds and represents an excellent return on investment.’
Gemco sees the BEMS optimisation programme as work in progress. The next step will involve carrying out a Trend control performance report, which enables a rapid site-wide system analysis of hundreds of data points within the BEMS outstations. It uses specialist analytics to identify systems points that fall outside pre-defined tolerance levels. The report presents all data points and highlights areas where improvements can be made.
