Volume 8 – Mechanical and Electrical Services - Malaysia Geoportal

Chapter 6 ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN MANAGEMENT OF M&E INSTALLATION
6.5 IMPLEMENTATION OF IMPROVEMENT WORKS
Any implementation of improvement work should be conducted with energy efficiency conscious in
mind. There are a number of opportunities for making building more energy efficient which do not
require the department to compromise other requirements, such as those regarding quality, lifetime,
precision and efficiency. In energy conscious implementation, energy efficiency is included as an
‘extra’ requirement added to normal. It is obvious that selecting energy efficient equipment at the
purchasing stage is more economical than buying the equipment afterwards, because the payback
period will be considerably shorter than if the savings were made at a later date.
Typically, technical purchasers experience a lot of difficulties in purchasing energy efficient
equipment, because of the low priority given to this aspect by the management. This means that
resources for those purchasers are seldom set aside in the budget either in the form of time to
investigate the alternatives properly or in the form of money for any additional investment in
equipment. This equipment is usually more expensive but they are cheaper in the longer time.
Another obstacle facing energy conscious implementation is that replacements often have to be
made on an emergency basis, i.e. sudden breakdown. This means that it is difficult to find time to
investigate more energy efficient alternatives.
Other obstacles include a lack of information about the technical possibilities, a lack of knowledge
about energy matters on the part of the suppliers and problems of cooperation both internally in the
department and externally with suppliers and consultants.
Several of the department’s personnel are usually involved in the purchase of new equipment. In
many cases the personnel actually involved depends on the type of equipment to be purchased.
Department are organized differently and this naturally has an influence on which people are
involved in the purchase. For this reason, the person to be responsible for the energy efficiency of
new equipment and for the procedure that should be followed often differs from department to
department.
One number of staff ought to be appointed to be in charge in investigating the alternatives for
making new equipment more energy efficient when the purchase is made. The person in charge
ought to be one of the technical purchasers as they are involved early on the purchasing process.
Alternatively, responsibility could be given to the purchasing department but by the time the
purchasing department sees the offer, it is often too late to change the level of energy efficiency.
The person in charge should not investigate the energy saving alternatives available for purchase
himself/herself, but he/she should be supporting member for the department’s group of technical
purchasers. The person in charge might for example draw up purchasing procedures together with
those responsible for the various types of purchase of energy consuming equipment.
The format of the procedure for energy efficient implementation should depend on how ambitious
the department is in its energy policy and goal. In general, it is recommended that the department
should start with a simple procedure for a couple of product areas or departments that are selected
on the basis of their expected savings potential. The procedure can then be expended later. The
procedure might for example stipulate that for equipment with low energy consumption, suppliers
should simply be asked the following three fundamental questions:
a) How much energy does equipment consume
b) Are there alternative solutions that consume less energy
c) How much more do they cost, and how long will these costs take to recover
6-6 March 2009