Energy efficiency is important – but an energy saving potential has yet to reach its full range. Energy services are means to reach that potential and energy companies are stressed as important actors into creating an established market for energy services. Energy services are tools that include providing in-direct services such as energy statistics, audits, declarations, consultations and analysis. It also includes a number of more complex and direct services, for example energy efficiency measurements or service contracts. This report is a result of a study on Danish and Swedish energy companies offering energy services, based on the market they act upon. It aims to find their driving forces for providing energy services. It also looks closer into whether publically and privately owned energy companies differ and if there exist contradictions to both supply energy and energy services at the same time. It also looks into how energy companies are affected and feel about national regulatory instruments. Energy companies in both countries offering energy services are reaching a wide spectrum of client segments and energy services. They often have the possibility to combine and package energy supply with energy services and they can reduce many of the theoretical barriers to energy efficiency by offering energy services. They are driven by a client demand and a closer client relationship, both leading to a decreased supply client fluctuation. A new business opportunity and a green profile strategy are also driving factors. Energy services also help energy companies to decrease heavy investment on existing equipment by having more control over their clients’ energy use and reducing energy utilization tops. Danish energy companies are tied to an energy saving obligation scheme, providing them with conditions, which their market is based, whilst Swedish energy companies offering energy services act on a market that is created by them and their competitors derive from different business backgrounds. There exist an assertive regulatory instrument in Denmark affecting driving factors for public and private energy companies and clients. In Sweden regulatory instruments, such as energy efficiency programmes, subsidises for energy audits and voluntary agreements for industries affect energy companies in a less way than in Denmark, mostly increasing a client demand for energy services. The regulatory instruments in Denmark increase a trust for energy companies as energy service providers as in Sweden they are trusted upon their existing substantial role on the energy market, a reputation of knowledge and experience and a strategy aiming towards visualisation, motivation and education for the clients. Public energy companies feel a responsibility towards their public owners to offer an efficient energy supply and by having a local connection to the municipality they are able to increase competiveness in the region by offering energy services. Private companies are substantially larger than public companies and have a great potential to reach out to a larger number of clients through their existing supply client stock. This is of substantial higher relevance in Sweden than Denmark.

Efficient energy use in restaurants Umeå Municipality wishes to combine energy issues with food control, and thus help restaurants to become more energy efficient. During March and April 2010, I visited seven restaurants and interviewed restaurant personnel about current state and application of kitchen appliances, using a checklist to make sure that the same questions were asked at all restaurants. The restaurants were all different sizes and offered different kinds of food. The study mostly focuses on energy efficiency by behaviour and not on location or technology. Almost every restaurant that was visited had the potential to improve in one or more areas, such as kitchen appliances, lamps and lighting fixtures, heating, cooling and ventilation. Concering the behavior of the personnel, it is always possible to be more careful with energy use. Based on a compilation of the responses from the checklist, action proposals were presented to each of the restaurants. The action proposals involve kitchen appliances, lamps and lighting fixtures, heating, cooling and ventilation. The food inspectors will hand out a newly created information sheet based on the obtained interview results to the restaurants in the municipality of Umeå. All restaurants can benefit from learning more about their kitchen appliances and optimize their usage. Some of the restaurants already had good knowledge of energy efficiency issues, but some didn’t have any knowledge at all. Some of the restaurants were really willing to improve their energy efficiency, whereas others didn’t care at all.

A methodology to develop an easy-to-use toolkit for the preliminary design of high performance schools in hot and humid climates was presented. The toolkit proposed in this research will allow decision makers without simulation knowledge easily to evaluate accurately energy efficient measures for K-5 schools, which would contribute to the accelerated dissemination of energy efficient design. For the development of the toolkit, first, a survey was performed to identify high performance measures available today being implemented in new K-5 school buildings. Then an existing case-study school building in a hot and humid climate was selected and analyzed to understand the energy use pattern in a school building and to be used in developing a calibrated simulation. Based on the information from the previous step, an as-built and calibrated simulation was then developed. To accomplish this, five calibration steps were performed to match the simulation results with the measured energy use. The five steps include: 1) Using an actual 2006 weather file with measured solar radiation, 2) Modifying lighting & equipment schedule using ASHRAE's RP-1093 methods, 3) Using actual equipment performance curves (i.e., scroll chiller), 4) Using the Winkelmann's method for the underground floor heat transfer, and 5) Modifying the HVAC and room setpoint temperature based on the measured field data. Next, the calibrated simulation of the case-study K-5 school was compared to an ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 code-compliant school. In the next step, the energy savings potentials from the application of several high performance measures to an equivalent ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 codecompliant school. The high performance measures applied included the recommendations from the ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guides (AEDG) for K- 12 and other high performance measures from the literature review as well as a daylighting strategy and solar PV and thermal systems. The results show that the net energy consumption of the final high performance school with the solar thermal and a solar PV system would be 1,162.1 MMBtu, which corresponds to the 14.9 kBtu/sqft-yr of EUI. The calculated final energy and cost savings over the code compliant school are 68.2% and 69.9%, respectively. As a final step of the research, specifications for a simplified easy-to-use toolkit were then developed, and a prototype screenshot of the toolkit was developed. The toolkit is expected to be used by non-technical decision-maker to select and evaluate high performance measures for a new school building in terms of energy and cost savings in a quick and easy way.

In a water distribution system from groundwater supply, the bulk of energy consumption is expended at pump stations. These pumps pressurize the water and transport it from the aquifer to the distribution system and to elevated storage tanks. Each pump in the system has a range of possible operating conditions with varying flow rates, hydraulic head imparted, and hydraulic efficiencies. In this research, the water distribution system of a mid-sized city in a subtropical climate is modeled and optimized in order to minimize the energy usage of its fourteen pumps. A simplified model of the pipes, pumps, and storage tanks is designed using freely-available EPANET hydraulic modeling software. Physical and operational parameters of this model are calibrated against five weeks of observed data using a genetic algorithm to predict storage tank volume given a forecasted system demand. Uncertainty analysis on the calibrated parameters is performed to assess model sensitivity. Finally, the pumping schedule for the system's fourteen pumps is optimized using a genetic algorithm in order to minimize total energy use across a 24-hour period.

Japan is the third energy consumption country in the world (next to the United States, and China), and the lowest to its energy self-sufficiency among advanced countries. Japan is aware of its dependence on the unstable Middle East for the energy security. Therefore, to ensure the Japanese having reliable supply of energy, become a vital issue not only to its economic development but also its national security. Japanese government attempted to change the condition of their vulnerability in regard to energy security and dependence on foreign energy. Japanese energy diplomacy primarily hopes to guarantee their energy security. Japan¡¦s energy security relied on other countries since postwar was an indisputable fact. Japan is unable to control energy security which is not surprising. However, Japan is the second largest economy country in the world, therefore, Japan's energy security strategy and concrete achievement, immediately impacts on Japan's politics and economic performance. Consequently, it brings a significant influence on the international politics and economics development. After postwar, Japan's energy security relied on the protective umbrella that U.S. provided. Two main constructions are: the maintenance of U.S.-Japan security alliance and the U.S. Pacific fleet control the sea lines of communication (SLOCs). The world energy domain changed rapidly since the cold war was ended. The Soviet Union contains rich reserved energy and opens to the capitalism market. This is a breakthrough opportunity for Japan especially when it is in an energy security dilemma. In addition, Chinese economic has been rising in recent years, the initiation energy is in demanding, that also impacts greatly on the energy market among Asian regions. As for Japan, its deficiency in energy resources becomes a numerous threat. Therefore, Japan's energy security problem not only affects the Asian regions, but also breaks that existing international power balance.

Predicted cooling system performance plays an important role in choices among alternative system selections and designs. When system performance is expressed in proper indicators such as "overall system energy consumption" or "overall system efficiency", it can provide the decision makers with a quantitative measure of the extent to which a cooling system satisfies the system design requirements and objectives. Predictions of cooling system energy consumption and efficiency imply assumptions about component performance. Quantitative appraisal of the uncertainty (lack of knowledge) in these assumptions can be used by design practitioners to select and design systems, by energy contractors to guarantee future system energy cost savings, and codes and standards officials to set proper goals to conserve energy. Our lack of knowledge has different sources, notably unknown tolerances in equipment nameplate data, and unpredictable load profiles. Both cause systems to under-perform current predictions, and as a result decrease the accuracy of the outcomes of energy simulations that commonly are used to verify system performance during the design and construction stages. There can be many other causes of unpredictable system behavior, for example due to bad workmanship in the installation, occurrence of faults in the operation of certain system parts, deterioration over time and other. These uncertainties are typically much harder to quantify and their propagation into the calculated energy consumption is much harder to accomplish. In this thesis, these categories of failures are not considered, i.e. the treatment is limited to component tolerances and load variability. In this research the effects of equipment nameplate tolerances and cooling load profile variability on the overall energy consumption and efficiency of commonly used commercial cooling systems are quantified. The main target of this thesis is to present a methodology for calculating the chances that a specific cooling system could deviate from a certain efficiency level by a certain margin, and use these results to guide practitioners and energy performance contractors to select, and guarantee system performances more realistically. By doing that, the plan is to establish a systematic approach of developing expressions of risk, in commercial cooling system consumption and efficiency calculations, and thus to advocate the use of expressions of risk as design targets. This thesis makes a contribution to improving our fundamental understanding of performance risk in selecting and sizing certain HVAC design concepts.

This report presents an overview of the engineering considerations involved in the design of grid-scale battery energy storage systems. Grid-scale is defined here as systems over 1 MW in rated power, typically operated by a utility, independent power producer, or Independent System Operator (ISO). The physical components of a BESS are presented and explained, including power electronics, an introduction to various commercially available battery technologies, necessary control systems, and balance of plant hardware. Also presented are a variety of real-world applications of battery energy storage systems, showing how the specific application determines what mix of technology will be selected when designing the system, as well as explaining the foundation for the control algorithms. / text

The impact of distributed energy resources (DERs), electric vehicles/plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs/PHEVs), and smart appliances on the distribution grid has been expected to be beneficial in terms of environment, economy, and reliability. But, it can be more beneficial by implementing smart controls. In the absence of additional controls, a negative effect was identified regarding the service lifetime of power distribution components. This research presents a new class of a smart house energy management system that can provide management and control of a residential house electric energy without inconvenience to the residents of the house and without overloading the distribution infrastructure. The implementation of these controls requires an infrastructure that continuously monitors the house power system operation, determines the real-time model of the house, computes better operating strategies over a planning period of time, and enables control of house resources. The smart house energy management system provides benefits for the good of utility and customer. In case of variable electricity rates, the management system can reduce the customer’s total energy cost. The benefits can be also extended to provide ancillary services to the utility such as control of peak load and reactive power support– assuming that this is worked out under a certain mutually beneficial arrangement between the utility and customer.

Currently, four areas of Texas have been designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as non-attainment areas because they exceeded the national one-hour ground-level ozone standard of 0.12 parts-per-million (ppm). Ozone is formed in the atmosphere by the reaction of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) in the presence of heat and sunlight. In May 2002, The Texas State Legislature passed Senate Bill 5, the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP), to reduce the emissions of NOx by several sources. As part of the 2001 building energy performance standards program which is one of the programs in the TERP, the Texas Legislature established the 2000 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) as the state energy code. Since September 1, 2001, the 2000 IECC has been required for newly constructed single and multifamily houses in Texas. Therefore, this study develops and applies portions of a methodology to calculate the energy savings and NOx emissions reductions from the adoption of the 2000 IECC to new single family houses in non-attainment and affected counties in Texas. To accomplish the objectives of the research, six major tasks were developed: 1) baseline data collection, 2) development of the 2000 IECC standard building simulation, 3) projection of the number of building permits in 2002, 4) comparison of energy simulations, 5) validation and, 6) NOx emissions reduction calculations. To begin, the 1999 standard residential building characteristics which are the baseline construction data were collected, and the 2000 IECC standard building characteristics were reviewed. Next, the annual and peak-day energy savings were calculated using the DOE-2 building energy simulation program. The building characteristics and the energy savings were then crosschecked using the data from previous studies, a site visit survey, and utility billing analysis. In this thesis, several case study houses are used to demonstrate the validation procedure. Finally, the calculated electricity savings (MWh/yr) were then converted into the NOx emissions reductions (tons/yr) using the EPA's eGRID database. The results of the peak-day electricity savings and NOx emissions reductions using this procedure are approximately twice the average day electricity savings and NOx emissions reductions.

In the last fifty years, Nunavut has developed a deep dependence on diesel for virtually all of its energy needs, including electricity. This dependence has created a number of economic, environmental and health related challenges in the territory, with an estimated 20% of the territory’s annual budget being spent on energy, thereby limiting the Government of Nunavut’s ability to address other essential infrastructure and societal needs, such as education, nutrition and health care and housing. One solution to address this diesel dependency is the use of renewable energy technologies (RETs), such as wind, solar and hydropower. As such, this thesis explores energy alternatives in Nunavut, and through RETScreen renewable energy simulations, found that solar power and wind power are technically viable options for Nunavut communities and a potentially successful means to offset diesel-generated electricity in Nunavut. However, through this analysis it was also discovered that accurate data or renewable resources are often unavailable for most Nunavut communities. Moreover, through qualitative open-ended interviews, the perspectives of Nunavut residents with regards to developing RETs in Nunavut were explored, and it was found that respondents generally supported the use of renewable energy in their communities, while acknowledging that there still remains a knowledge gap among residents regarding renewable energy, stemming from a lack of communication between the communities, government and the utility company. In addition, the perceived challenges, opportunities and gaps that exist with regards to renewable energy policy and program development were discussed with government policy-makers through further interviews, and it was discovered that often government departments work largely independently of each other rather than collaboratively, creating gaps and oversights in renewable energy policy in Nunavut. Combined, the results of this thesis were used to develop a number of recommended policy actions that could be undertaken by the territorial and federal government to support a shift towards renewable energy in order to develop a sustainable and self-sufficient energy plan in Nunavut. They include: gathering accurate renewable resource data in Nunavut; increasing community consultations on the subject of renewable energy; building strong partnerships with universities, colleges and industry; developing a knowledge sharing network; and finally increasing accessibility to renewable energy programs and policies in Nunavut. / Thesis (Master, Environmental Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-29 23:47:11.775