How to Make Buildings More Efficient?

A huge part of the Green Energy Transition revolves around how we can reduce the carbon footprint of energy production, e.g., by moving towards wind, solar, or nuclear energy. On the other hand, we can also go greener by saving energy. This does not always mean that we need to give something up, but that we increase efficiency, e.g., by switching to more modern technology such as heat pumps instead of gas heating. Or to analyze your energy spending through novel AI-based applications. Today, we are looking into how we can improve the efficiency of ordinary buildings such as schools, dorms, or administrative buildings. The technical term is

Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) Projects

and we are going to learn more about it in today’s interview with one of the experts in the field, Petr Pavek.

Who Are You?

My name is Petr Pavek, and I work as an officer in the municipality of Jičín, a town in the northeast of Bohemia. However, I wanted to speak about EPC projects—Energy Performance Contracting Projects—in which I was involved three years ago. Back then, I was working for Enesa a.s., a Prague-Pardubice-based EPC contractor in the Czech Republic. They are the leaders in these kinds of projects.

What are Energy Performance Contracting Projects?

As an EPC Contractor, you are involved in a public offering for several buildings, usually about five to ten, most commonly located within one town. They include primary schools, nurseries, administration buildings, and even cinemas and theatres. The primary purpose of these projects is to save energy. There are three ways to do this:

The first, probably the most boring yet efficient, is the reconstruction of the boiler room, where you replace old boilers with new ones. By doing so, you can increase efficiency by some 10%. This marks the biggest financial impact of the project. Secondly, it is wise to change as many old lights, sometimes even lightbulbs, as possible with LEDs. This changes the energy consumption from some 60 W to 7 W, which is an impressive saving of almost 90%. And the third part, which has probably more green impact than financial impact, is to change the water flow with the aerators (e.g. Watersavers) – sometimes you can save up to 75% as you go from a glow of 12 liters per minute down to 3 or 4 liters per minute.

EPC projects are suitable investments: They are based on a loan, which an EPC contractor guarantees and the loan is paid back with the money saved due to lower energy consumption. Imagine the running energy costs of a municipality building to be 5 Mio CZK (approx 200 Tsd euro) per year. After implementing the changes, the bill might go down to 4 Mio CZK per year. Then 800 Tsd CZK are used to pay back the loan. In the start, they can save some 2-4% of costs, increasing after the load is fully paid back. But except that, investor got a completely new boiler room, usually for some 30-40 years old and after lifetime.

The goal in EPC projects is to save a certain amount of kWh rather than a specific financial goal because energy prices can vary extremely over time.

Who Are the Investors?

The Czech region’s (kraj) governments or the towns are the main investors. In this month was signed big EPC project for Prague transportation company.

What was Your Task in These Projects?

I took part in an EPC project in Vrchlabi, near the Krkonoše mountains, where we got five buildings to renovate. There were two primary schools, one nursery, and two municipality buildings. In four of them, we changed the gas boilers to newer ones with higher efficiency and better control systems: They went from a local gas meter to a completely remote controllable system. Our colleagues in the dispatching in Pardubice can watch all the consumption data online. We then changed thousands of light sources to LED and installed hundreds of aerators and six shower heads with a lower water flow. From installation in university dorms, we know that the students are quite unhappy with it because it can take longer to shower or do some cleaning. But the measurements give the right to it because we can save more than 50% water. And it is not just water, but the heat for hot water, too.

My task was a mix of site manager and project manager. This project was identified as small, so it was only for one person – me. Usually, these projects are bigger: There are usually 2-3 site managers, plus the project managers. We worked with HVAC technicians who would replace the boilers and electricians for the lights and electricity. In one building, we also changed the entire electrical installation, which is usually not part of the EPC projects, but the investor wanted it.

What is the Biggest Challenge?

The biggest challenge is to work with the staff at the building. In every building, about two people are running it – usually someone in charge of the technical stuff and some administrator. If there are five different buildings in the project, you need to have a close relationship with ten other people – even in such a small project. These projects have no benefits for them, but they need to deal with all the onsite challenges, like a heating outage for two weeks, moving all of the furniture, allowing external people in the building, and cooperating with them.

The deadlines are also a challenge. Our project was designed to be six months long, but we discovered on the go that it is impossible to change four boiler rooms, including design, in six months. The design itself took three months, and then winter came. So, we switched half of the renovation to the following year in the summer season. The project was finished one year later, as anticipated.

Do You Have Any Future Plans?

Yes, definitely. There are new approaches compared to when I left the company, Enesa a.s.. Back then, photovoltaics (PV) were not part of the projects, but now they are since the price of PV dropped in the last decade. They usually attach the PV to buildings with higher energy demand, like primary schools with significant heating demand. The school building we worked on had two 120 kW gas boilers.

Another challenge is to integrate heat pumps. Now I expect mainly using combinations of heat pumps and gas boilers, where the gas boilers are used to support the heat pump during the coldest days of winter, and for the rest, we are using the heat pump. Also, air conditioning has become increasingly important with the rising temperature due to climate change.

Whom to Contact?

Are you feeling inspired by this exciting idea and eager to explore more? Reach out to Petr for a delightful discussion.

Further Readings: