The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is causing a current shift in thinking. Dave Garrett, Electrium’s Marketing Manager for Industrial Circuit Protection, looks at ways to monitor and manage power usage using distribution boards developed specially for the task:
When considering today’s pressing need for better energy efficiency, a change that is both simple and yet far reaching to the way we use our finite reserves of power is demonstrated by the integration of panel meters into the latest generation of three-phase distribution boards.
Wylex is market leader in the manufacture and supply of these products, meeting the demanding needs of many industry sectors - in particular, education, health and manufacturing. In fact, the ever-changing requirements of electrical installations in just about every commercial building that exists today. This development meets the needs of both producers and consumers of electric power, as these products can now provide monitoring and control information benefitting not only utilities, but also commercial and industrial situations.
Part L2 of the Building Regulations:
Part L2 of the Building Regulations for England and Wales addresses energy efficiency requirements in non-domestic buildings (three phase applications). A small part of this updated requirement focuses on the need to be able to understand energy demands in buildings and the associated need to meter energy usage, the aim being to allow building managers, landlords and tenants to understand where energy is used or wasted and to create opportunities to reduce energy consumption.
It is expected that these measures will lead to a decrease in power demand of between 5 to10% each year. This makes a useful contribution to the total carbon reduction target for the UK of -30% by 2015.
Traditionally, final distribution boards supply both lighting and small power loads. The Wylex range with integral smart metering enables specifiers and installers to meet the energy metering requirements of Part L2 cost-effectively without having to install separate distribution boards and feeders for each type of load. The sub-metering requirements apply to all new and refurbished non domestic buildings greater than 500m2 and call for energy sub-metering so that at least 90% of the estimated annual energy consumption can be assigned to specific end-use categories such as lighting, heating, pumps and fans.
To demonstrate, the following scenarios help explain the benefits available from using panel boards capable of power monitoring applications.
- Firstly, demand management can be controlled, so the system can minimise electrical demand penalties that sometimes can represent up to 30% of a typical industrial utility bill.
- Power control, where electricity is the process output, can also be managed; there is also often on-site generation, emergency load shedding, or systems where a high-quality and stable electric power source is critical to the process and needs to be accurately controlled.
Building operators need to have a clear understanding of exactly where all the energy is being consumed by utilising sub-metering to monitor at least 90% of the energy usage assigned to various end use categories e.g.: heating, lighting, power and various others.
This is explained in detail by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers guide to energy sub-metering in non-domestic buildings ref TM39 building energy metering. Notwithstanding the Building Regulations, power quality is an important parameter to monitor too. Providing the facility to observe and record power quality events, or conditions that could cause a production shutdown, like voltage sags, brownouts, transients, and high harmonic distortion, is increasingly important as rising numbers of inductive loads influence the supply.
Also, load profiling lets the user prepare for utility deregulation and make fact-based decisions on future demand-side management control systems. Even activity-based cost accounting becomes feasible, allowing a customer to allocate energy costs based on actual usage, based on sub-metering rather than other measurements such as basic square footage allocation.
Best value engineered solution:
Wylex’s aim with metered panel boards is to provide the best value engineered solution offering quality circuit protection systems that can help building managers, landlords and tenants to understand the energy usage and consequently create opportunities to reduce the overall energy consumption today and for the future.