We all remember reading about Benjamin Franklin in grade school, and the kite in the storm with the key attached to the string, and voila…he proved the relationship between lighting and electricity.
Ben Franklin was also famous for his many axioms, including “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
We all know this is usually true in many areas of life, however it may be especially true in facilities management, and in all the HVAC equipment and systems that come along with it.
HVAC is often one of the most expensive facility systems to purchase and maintain. It’s also a critical system in today’s world, since everyone loves to be in the comfort zone of 68-78 degrees.
It makes perfect sense that an expensive system like this should be maintained for optimal performance. However, preventive maintenance comes with a price tag. You often have to pay someone to keep this equipment running at peak performance, yet how do you know it’s paying dividends?
Case in point: the simple act of cleaning condenser coils can have a dramatic effect on performance, and on savings.
The chart here shows in green the energy usage of an RTU before cleaning coils and after, showing that clean coils reduce energy consumption by about 5kW, on average.
If this unit runs 12 hours a day, that’s 60 kWh a day saved.
For this customer, the effective kWh rate from the July bill is $.10/kWh.
That’s $6 a day in savings, or $1,000 over the 6 months of the cooling season (in the southern U.S., where this facility is located)!
Preventive maintenance savings opportunities like this one exist across your facilities, and a tool like SiteSage allows you to put a dollar figure on each one.
The possibilities are endless, and the savings are real.
Interested in learning more about how to assess the total cost of ownership of your equipment?
