Power: energy management

Low cost heating controls audits

Power consultancy providing pragmatic, cost effective and sustainable solutions.

Over the years we have carried out a large number of instrumented energy surveys. These surveys have indicated that a significant number of heating control system do not operate as expected. Typical faults found include:

• optimisers bringing heating plant on up to 9 hours before occupancy start
• compensators in boost mode during day periods
• time clocks bring plant on over the weekend despite being set to be off.

The typical site where these problems were found had a relatively low energy spend and did not warrant a full energy survey. In order to address this dilemma a low cost technique was developed to allow remote auditing of the heating controls. This technique has now been successfully used on over 100 buildings with a controls fault found in 1 in 3 buildings.

This service provides a cost effective way of confirming that heating controls are correctly operating without the need for a costly site visit. For each site audited, a graphical indication of control performance is provided together with a brief description of the fault and possible causes.

Low cost heating controls audit is most applicable to organisations with multi-site operations involving retailing or similar small to medium size premises such as banks and high street stores.