Basic HTML-Version
119
Five workging groups emerged:
I: Object-/building analyses
II: Equipment analyses
III: Users behavior
IV: Organisation/management
V: PR/politics
While working group I recorded the data of
the entire institute’s buildings and deter-
mined model buildings and rooms for later
measurements (see figure 2), working
group II determined the exact number of
power-hungry devices in order to be able
to estimate the actual energy consumption
during a two-week-trial.
Working group III thought of means to
spread awareness and motivation to take an
active role in the power saving project. The
fourth working group attended to "organiza-
tion and management" (including the issues
of allocating the employees to their working
spaces, the purchase, maintenance and
repair of electronic devices, as well as the
basic energy-saving setting on the com-
puters). The task of the public relations
working group was communication and
information, mainly to spread awareness
and motivate people to participate in the
project.
Institute staff and guests were invited to take
part in a seminar including a work-shop,
which introduced the project. Team members
as well as external speakers presented diffe-
rent aspects of the project. Working group III
seized the opportunity to collect data of usa-
ge behaviour before the topic was introduced
with the help of a pre and post test question-
naire. During the workshop more measures
and tools for saving energy were developed,
which were presented and discussed during
a concluding session.
From this pretest data it could be concluded
that most of the energy was used for laptops,
computers, and printers. Based on these
findings, different scenarios were developed
which were supposed to evaluate small and
bigger investments (in for example power
strips or the purchase of new electronic
equipment). As a result savings of up to 44%
for scenario 1 and 55% for scenario 2 were
estimated. With a small investment of about
280 Euros (scenario 1) the institute could
save 3800 Euros and 14.520 kg CO2 within
three years.
Scenario 1 was chosen (mainly due to cost
reasons). The investments were made and
measurements were done yet again. As can
be seen in figure 4, 30% of energy could be
saved with this scenario. This meant savings
of up to 1780 Euros and 9.960 kg CO2, at a
amortization rate of three years.
The results of the user questionnaire were in-
teresting: 90% of the participants stated that
they would use means to save energy (as for
Scenario I: What measures were included?
Computers:
Unplugging computers after work (evening) and at the
weekends. Easily realizable by using power strips with
power buttons.
Printers:
Unplugging printers over night and at the weekends. Easily
realizable by using power strips with power buttons. Enabling
automatically switching into power saving mode during daytime.
Lighting:
The installed lamps were already optimized (4x38W T5 lamps with
electronic ballasts instead of 4x58-80W T8 lamps). Additional energy
can be saved by switching off the light when leaving the room or when
no light is required at all.
With these measures up to 40% of energy can be saved.