Rabbit Thought of the Day

I am sat here waiting patiently for a contractor to send me some documents by email. I am supposed to review these documents and return the comments by the close of play today. However, despite a number of phone calls and promises that the documents are on the way they have not yet arrived in my inbox. I am beginning to think they have been sent by snail-mail and not email.

When calculating the energy requirements of building the lighting is taken at 12W/m sq. One of my projects has a total floor area 22,600m sq, giving a total lighting load of 271kw, if the lighting was to be on 24 hours a day, as is in a lot buildings in London, this use 6504kWh a day, assume a rate of 7.35p then the daily cost of the lighting would be about £478 per day and a total annual cost of £174,484.

With lighting control the lights are now going to up for a maximum of 8 hours per day, this would give a annual cost of £58,162, giving an annual saving of £116,322. Not bad eh, that’s just using PIR sensors, if you incorporate photo cells you could decrease your fuel costs even further, I would imagine that if an office block didn’t incorporate this type of control and we wanted to convert the lighting scheme the payback period would be in the region of 3 years. This is for a small office block there are many much larger than this in central London.

If anybody reading this needs an energy manager/electrical engineer, then make me offer I love this type of work.

Rabbit

A article today on the BBC website is reporting that Mp’s are investigating how to lower the carbon foot print of Britain’s offices, shops and factories. If you travel around London at night you will see that the majority of London’s office blocks have their lighting switched on throughout the night. There is no reason for lights to be on during the night its just wasteful. I would imagine that the tenants of these offices receive massive fuel bills, which could lowered with a little though and investment.

In my job as an electrical project engineer I am now working on a number of projects in central London, the lighting in these blocks has been specifically designed to switch off when not use, using PIR and photo cells it very easy to control lighting in any environment. If fact the Building regulations require us to design new buildings in such a way.

If you look at Canary Wharf in an evening nearly every light on every floor in every block is switched on, it makes you wonder how much these companies pay for electricity annually. If they controlled their lighting better not only would it reduce cost and of course increase profits, but it would also reduce emissions of CO2 light pollution as well.

Friday already, this week seems to have flown by, just a few more hours of hard graft and it will be the weekend once again. The weather doesn’t look to promising though, but does it really matter. As long as we have a few days of relaxation put our feet up and do nothing it will do us the world of good.

We have a bank holiday coming up soon, so I will be making plans on what to do and where to go, I already have a few ideas formulating in my little grey cells. The late spring bank holiday am planning on visiting my father in Yorkshire, I always try and get up there a 2 or 3 times a year. Rosemary loves Yorkshire she always says is much greener and far better scenery than Essex.

I have a few things that I need to attend to this weekend, it doesn’t involve a great deal of effort, but I need to visit the local recycling centre to get rid of a couple of old electrical appliances that no longer work or in a dangerous condition.

More Later

Rabbit