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hvac energy efficiency retrofits

HVAC Energy Efficiency Retrofits: The Basics

hvac energy efficiency retrofits

RENEW Energy partners specializes in helping fund your energy saving retrofits for your commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings. There are many different technologies we can install to make your buildings more efficient and reduce your energy bill. One place to deliver significant savings is by heating and cooling your building more efficiently, with energy efficiency retrofits to your Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning “HVAC.”

Last month we discussed the history of HVAC, a story where Willis Carrier’s practical solution to too much humidity in a publishing factory led to the first mass-produced Cooling and Ventilation System. Today, HVAC systems continue to get more efficient, regulating climates throughout modern buildings.

HVAC Retrofits

For energy efficiency retrofits, the first places you need to look are the upgrades that will save you the most money. You should aim for an HVAC system that is at least 80% efficient. If your HVAC is not as efficient, updating your system will reduce your energy bills. When updating your HVAC, you need to think about the following:

Basic Energy Efficiency Retrofits

    • Economizers:
      • An economizer is a part of the outdoor system, most often mounted on the roof, of an HVAC system for commercial buildings. The economizer evaluates outside air temperature and even humidity levels. When the exterior air levels are appropriate, it uses the outside air to cool your building. HVAC economizers use logic controllers and sensors to get an accurate read on outside air quality. As the economizer detects the right level of outside air to bring in, it utilizes internal dampers to control the amount of air that gets pulled in, recirculated and exhausted from your building. It saves on energy, helps your A/C last longer, and improves air quality.
    • Compressor/Condenser
      • The compressor reduces the volume of gas to add pressure to it. The compressor uses more power than any other component of an air conditioner, cutting down on how much power it uses helps immensely with increasing energy efficiency. Upgraded compressors provide the ability to operate at a lower capacity with controls that include Variable Frequency Drives.
      • An HVAC condenser takes the pressurized gas and turns it into liquid vapor.
      • Condensers and compressors should be upgraded at the same time to create the most efficient system possible.
    • Condensate Recovery
      • In a typical commercial air conditioning system, warm, humid air from the building is run over a cold air handler that cools the air. When this is done, condensate water is created and recovered for reuse. A drip pan collects this relatively clean water, and it is discharged to a sewer.
      • With condensate recovery, that water is diverted to the cooling system, helping the system run more efficiently.
    • Duct Insulation/Duct Sealing
      • To prevent air leaks, duct sealing is necessary along the entire length of the ductwork system. Air leaks in your ductwork system can account for a significant loss of energy and money, especially larger systems in commercial buildings. The most insulated method of construction continues to be pioneered by the Passive House International construction standard.
    • Duct Size Optimization
      • Oversized Ducts: Larger than normal ducts are certainly capable of handling more airflow. But your HVAC system may not be equipped to pump that much air. In fact, your system needs a specific air pressure in the ductwork to properly distribute air. Oversized ducts could cause your HVAC system to work too hard and limit the amount of conditioned air that reaches your home. Forcing your system to work harder than it should leaves it prone to breakdowns and increases your energy usage.
      • Undersized Ducts: If your ducts are too small to accommodate the air flowing through them, the pressure increases and backs up in the system. This causes resistance for the blower fan, reducing your HVAC system’s efficiency and longevity. Over time, this can lead to significant stress on the components and can inevitably lead to a breakdown.
      • Duct Sizing Method: The Manual D Sizing Method is the industry standard that was developed by the Air Conditioning Contractors of America. This method involves evaluating the individual rooms in your home to determine optimal airflow, control excessive noise, seal ductwork, provide insulation, and retrofit the design as needed. This all works to correct pressure imbalances and ensure your system runs as efficiently as possible to supply each room of your home with adequate, conditioned airflow.
    • Variable Air Volume (VAV)
      • Variable air volume (VAV) systems enable energy-efficient HVAC system distribution by optimizing the amount and temperature of distributed air. Appropriate operations and maintenance (O&M) of VAV systems is necessary to optimize system performance and achieve high efficiency.
    • Heating and Cooling Recovery
      • This is the process of recovering excess thermal energy that would otherwise be emitted, in order to use it as energy and reduce your overall consumption.
      • Thermal energy can be recovered from water, air, or a ground source.
      • This can also fall under the umbrella of CHP (Combined Heat and Power), which could further reduce energy usage.

Chiller Upgrades.

For energy efficiency retrofits, it is important to specifically think about how your building is cooled. Freezer storage alone makes up about one percent of global emissions. Here are a few things to think about:

      • Chillers can be regulated by air or water. Air chillers are less expensive but use more energy.
      • Water chillers must be efficient and up to date to conserve and reuse water, but when maintained, are much more energy efficient.
    • Chiller Controls
      • The most efficient ones we can install include Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) that regulate the amount of energy needed throughout the day depending on internal and external temperatures.
    • Modular Chillers
      • Modular chillers are ideal because each module can operate independently from each other. If one module fails, the other can continue to run. This is ideal for efficiency and maintenance.
    • Heat Recovery Chillers
      • If heating and cooling are needed at once, heat recovery chillers can allow for the heat they emit to be redirected to other energy sources. These chillers don’t always get hot enough for cold climates but are ideal for mixed use spaces.

Conclusion

To summarize, when contemplating energy efficiency retrofits, updating your HVAC systems is a crucial way to decarbonize and save money. Additional savings can be made by implementing water saving retrofits. The most ideal systems interact with each other and redirect excess energy for further use. An energy management system and variable frequency drives can help you control and monitor your HVAC effectively so that it does not have to run at full capacity 24 hours a day. Stay up to date about HVAC energy efficiency retrofits by reading our most recent article on the future of HVAC retrofits. Finally, keep your buildings and pipes well-insulated to prevent energy leakage.

No matter how you decide to increase your energy efficiency and decrease your carbon footprint, these kinds of project require funding. In order to fund an energy efficiency project for your building(s), RENEW Energy Partners offers an energy service agreement (ESA). The Energy Service Agreement:

  • Is an off-balance sheet transaction. You do not own the asset or carry it on your balance sheet.
  • RENEW provides preventive and corrective maintenance in the service agreement.
  • Your payment to RENEW will be based on the energy savings confirmed once the system is operational.

Unlike a lease or a loan, which are on balance sheet, do not include maintenance, and may or may not deliver energy savings, the service agreement provides all of the above and then some:

  • Executing a service agreement is fast – once the project is scoped by an energy professional (and we can recommend one), you execute a simple service agreement contract and RENEW will fund the project.
  • Executing a service agreement frees up your capital budget for your other priorities, allowing you to focus on growing your core business.
  • Executing a service agreement now means your net cash flows are higher than waiting and doing it yourself in a year.
  • And finally – executing a service agreement means flexibility. Perhaps you buy another building or look at additional efficiency measures–with a one-page addendum to your existing ESA you can have those new lights, HVAC, and controls at your new building, and you simultaneously reduce your operating expense!

The RENEW Energy Service Agreement allows businesses to focus on what they do best, while ensuring that their facilities are performing at their peak with brand new, and high-efficiency equipment. In this current climate of cost control and resource allocation, the energy service agreement is the perfect solution to help businesses meet sustainability goals and keep facilities in top condition. Reach out to RENEW and talk to us about financing your energy saving retrofits today.

A Brief History of HVAC: An Important Energy Saving Retrofit

RENEW Energy partners specializes in helping fund your energy saving retrofits for your commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings. There are many different technologies we can install to make your buildings more efficient and reduce your energy bill. One place to deliver significant savings is by heating and cooling your building more efficiently, with upgrades to your Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning “HVAC”.

A Brief History of HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning):

In terms of heating, Benjamin Franklin invented the cast iron Franklin stove in 1742, which was a predecessor of the furnace. Until 1885, most homes were heated by wood-burning fireplaces, but a riveted-steel coal furnace transported heat by natural convection via ducts from the basement furnace to upper rooms. Cast iron radiators were invented around the same time and enabled homeowners to heat their homes with a coal-fired boiler that could deliver hot water or steam heat to radiators in every room. In 1935, the first forced-air furnace was introduced and used an electric fan to distribute coal-heated air through the home’s ducts; gas and oil-fired versions followed.

Where cooling is concerned, Willis Carrier is generally credited with the invention of Air Conditioning in 1902, motivated to solve a humidity problem for a Brooklyn publishing company. He designed and patented his “Apparatus for Treating Air” that used cooling coils to either humidify the air by heating water or dehumidify by cooling water using an additionally patented control system. When he realized other businesses could benefit from temperature and humidity regulation he formed his own company, the Carrier Engineering Corporation.

Carrier’s company installed the first well-designed cooling system for theaters in Los Angeles in 1922. Air was pumped through higher vents, which resulted in more equally distributed cooling. On Memorial Day in 1925, Carrier introduced a centrifugal chilling system at New York’s Rivoli Theater: a breakthrough in HVAC inventions. Although it was more reliable and less costly than previous cooling systems, it was still too big and expensive to use wide scale.

Frigidaire and General Electric both appeared on the HVAC scene within a decade of Carrier’s big achievement. In 1929, Frigidaire debuted a split-system room cooler that was shaped like a radio cabinet. Although it was small enough for homes, it was heavy and required its own condenser. A year later, General Electric patented 32 prototypes for improved self-contained room coolers. In 1931, H.H. Schultz and J.Q. Sherman invented the first room air conditioner; it sat on a window ledge, similar to portable units today.

Since 1947, AC units became more compact and cheaper. In that year, 43,000 systems were in use. By the 1960s, most new homes in the United States were built with central air conditioning. By then, electric air conditioner window units were affordable and had come down in price from the early days; a 1938 Chrysler unit cost $416 ($8,730.49 today). By 2009, the Energy Information Administration reported that 87 percent of all American households used AC units.

Today, heating, cooling, and ventilation systems are installed together as HVAC systems that work to distribute regulated temperatures throughout modern buildings. In upcoming blog posts, we will learn more about the future of HVAC and the energy efficiency measures that commercial, industrial, and institutional facilities can make to improve their facilities. Updating your (sometimes historic) HVAC system is a key part of most energy saving retrofits. Our experts at RENEW are in tune with the most innovative HVAC technologies on the market and we can install, run, and maintain these systems in your buildings, lowering your carbon emissions and reducing your energy bills without affecting your bottom line.

 

No matter how you decide to improve your HVAC system, energy savings retrofits projects require funding. In order to fund an energy efficiency retrofit for your building(s), RENEW Energy Partners offers our own energy service agreement (ESA). The Energy Service Agreement:

  • Is an off-balance sheet transaction. You do not own the asset or carry it on your balance sheet.
  • RENEW provides preventive and corrective maintenance in the service agreement
  • Your payment to RENEW will be based on the energy savings confirmed once the system is operational.

Unlike a lease or a loan, which are on balance sheet, do not include maintenance, and may or may not deliver energy savings, the service agreement provides all of the above and then some:

  • Executing a service agreement is fast – once the project is scoped by an energy professional (and we can recommend one), you execute a simple service agreement contract and RENEW will fund the project.
  • Executing a service agreement frees up your capital budget for your other priorities, allowing you to focus on growing your core business.
  • Executing a service agreement now means your net cash flows are higher than waiting and doing it yourself in a year.
  • And finally – executing a service agreement means flexibility. Perhaps you buy another building or look at additional efficiency measures–with a one-page addendum to your existing ESA you can have those new lights, HVAC, and controls at your new building, and you simultaneously reduce your operating expense! 

 

The RENEW Energy Service Agreement allows businesses to focus on what they do best, while ensuring that their facilities are performing at their peak with brand new, and high-efficiency equipment. In this current climate of cost control and resource allocation, the energy service agreement is the perfect solution to help businesses meet sustainability goals and keep facilities in top condition. Reach out to RENEW and talk to us about funding your energy saving retrofits today.

21 Ways to Save: Energy, Carbon, and Operating Expenses

Lighting: The Easiest Energy Saving Retrofit

21 Ways to Save: Energy, Carbon, and Operating Expenses

RENEW Energy partners specializes in helping fund your energy saving retrofits for your commercial, industrial and institutional buildings. There are many different technologies we install to make your buildings more efficient and reduce your energy bill. One of the best places to start is with an energy saving LED lighting retrofit.

A Brief History of Lighting: 

Illumination has come along was since 1880, when the Edison Electric Company started marketing their newest product, a lightbulb with a carbonized bamboo filament. Eventually, the bamboo filaments changed to tungsten, and after a while the first incandescent bulbs were invented, which began to be distributed in the 1940s.

Modern incandescent bulbs, like their predecessors, are not energy efficient – less than 10% of electrical power supplied to the bulb is converted into visible light. The remaining energy is lost as heat. These low-efficiency incandescent bulbs are still commonly used today because they are widely available, have a low first cost, are easily incorporated into electrical systems, and have a low voltage operation in battery powered devices.

These incandescent bulbs could easily be the ones lighting your buildings. If that is the case, 90% of your lighting bill is being wasted! The good news is, a lighting retrofit is one of simplest ways to increase your energy efficiency, save money on your energy bills, and lower your carbon footprint. RENEW Energy Partners is here to provide the funding you need to do so.

The Future of Energy Saving Lighting:

A great energy savings retrofit starts with lighting. The best way to reduce your lighting costs is to switch to LED lighting (LED stands for light-emitting diode). Although once known mainly for indicator and traffic lights, LEDs are today’s most energy-efficient and rapidly developing lighting technology. LEDs use up to 90% less energy and last up to 25 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs.

LED lights are such a great energy saving retrofit that most if not all new buildings use LED lights. However, 1,000’s of buildings have yet to convert. Energy-saving LED retrofitting is great because they have great payback (usually less than a few years), are now a proven technology with little performance risk, and they offer significant maintenance savings since they last 50 to 100 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

If you are exploring an energy savings retrofits start by looking up, if you don’t see LED lights than that is where you should start.

Once you have installed new bulbs, the next step to make your building more energy efficient is to install lighting controls. The technology varies, but these are effectively a dimmer switch. Instead of only two options for lighting (on and off), building operators can have lights running anywhere on the gradient between 1%-100% use). This allows for more efficient lighting settings, in addition to more efficient bulbs. In fact, using dimmable LED lights doubles the life of your bulb, saving on energy costs even further.

Another way to enhance your energy saving retrofit is to install motion sensors. Motion sensors allow your lighting to turn on when they detect movement and to turn off if they have not detected movement for a while. This helps save energy by automatically shutting of lights in empty rooms. The same effect is achieved with lighting timers if your building runs on a regular schedule.

Dimmers, motion sensors, and lighting timers are controlled using a smart lighting system. When these are incorporated into your building management system, they allow you to control the lighting for your entire building on one screen. In addition, some smart lighting systems have analytics tools so you can monitor your energy use in real time and compare it to your past energy use.

Implement Energy Saving Lighting with an Energy Service Agreement

No matter how you decide to increase your energy efficiency and decrease your carbon footprint, these kinds of project require funding. In order to fund an energy efficiency project for your building(s), RENEW Energy Partners offers an energy service agreement (ESA). The Energy Service Agreement:

  • Is an off-balance sheet transaction. You do not own the asset or carry it on your balance sheet.
  • RENEW provides preventive and corrective maintenance in the service agreement
  • Your payment to RENEW will be based on the energy savings confirmed once the system is operational.

Unlike a lease or a loan, which are on balance sheet, do not include maintenance, and may or may not deliver energy savings, the service agreement provides all of the above and then some:

  • Executing a service agreement is fast – once the project is scoped by an energy professional (and we can recommend one), you execute a simple service agreement contract and RENEW will fund the project.
  • Executing a service agreement frees up your capital budget for your other priorities, allowing you to focus on growing your core business.
  • Executing a service agreement now means your net cash flows are higher than waiting and doing it yourself in a year.
  • And finally – executing a service agreement means flexibility. Perhaps you buy another building or look at additional efficiency measures–with a one-page addendum to your existing ESA you can have those new lights, HVAC, and controls at your new building, and you simultaneously reduce your operating expense!

 The RENEW Energy Service Agreement allows businesses to focus on what they do best, while ensuring that their facilities are performing at their peak with brand new, and high-efficiency equipment. In this current climate of cost control and resource allocation, the energy service agreement is the perfect solution to help businesses meet sustainability goals and keep facilities in top condition. Reach out to RENEW and talk to us about financing your energy saving retrofits today.

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