GLOBAL FITNESS CENTER SEES RESULTS
Global Fitness Center is a health club in Stow, MA. The facility is approximately 15,000 square feet and has six HVAC units. They were interested in the Save Energy Systems - Energy Management System (EMS) because they were hoping to save money on their heating and cooling costs.
CHALLENGE
Initially, their top concern was that the system would provide too much data when the number one thing they wanted was to understand how they were saving money and if there were things that could be tweaked to save even more. They also worried that they might not save as much money as the estimate they had received. In the end however, they felt they would save more than enough to justify moving forward.
—Dave Bundy, Owner
I suspected that the system would save us money, but not as much as it has.
SOLUTION
The SES Energy Management System was installed in early April 2013. Global Fitness found the user interface to be easy to use, and their concerns about too much data quickly disappeared. They also saw what they wanted to see: significant energy savings right away.
In fact, Global Fitness saved nearly $1,000 in the first month alone!
RESULTS
We analyzed the installation beginning in May 2013, the first full billing month we could take a look at, and ran it through February 2014. In those 10 months our analysis showed that the EMS saved Global Fitness $6,315.10 in electricity costs and another $476.49 in natural gas. If calculated over a full year, the total annual savings would be over $8,000.
The simple ROI…the Save Energy Systems EMS paid for itself in under a year. Since the 10-month analysis period was very similar to the previous year in terms of heating and cooling “Degree Days”, Global Fitness can expect to save over $8,000 every year - and even more if energy costs rise.
—Dave Bundy, Owner
There are a lot of unapparent benefits like quick change of settings and the ability to shut back your system on holidays and early closings. Plus, we don’t have the hot and cold spots that we used to have. The temperature is much more even throughout our facility.
UNEXPECTED BENEFITS
Besides finding out the system was easy to use and that the data was far from overwhelming, Global Fitness Center found a few extra benefits that made installing the EMS an even sweeter deal.
Having an easy to use system from day one made a huge difference for Global Fitness. If they need access to their system, from virtually anywhere, all they have to do is log in from their computer, tablet, or phone, to see what is going on and make any changes they would like to make. They are able to fully control the comfort of each individual area, as well as create a uniform environment across the whole facility. This is one of those small things that has a real impact as the customer suddenly no longer has to think about this.
ANALYSIS
Table 1 below is a chart of kilo-Watt hours (kWh) used for each month from May through February of two consecutive years (2012/13 and 2013/14). Column 3 calculates the reduced kWh for each month’s bill from 2013/14 as compared to the previous year, 2012/13, resulting in a total savings of 45,600 kWh. As show, the savings range from 2,640 kWh savings in February to a high of 7,800 kWh savings in July.
In order to make sure that the savings were not attributable to monthly temperature differentials from year to year, the expected kWh use was calculated using cooling and heating “Degree Day” adjustments. Using data from Column 1 (2012/13) as the baseline, and Degree Day values from the web site degreeday.net, expected kWh use was calculated and presented in Column 4. The summer months (May – September) were adjusted using “cooling degree days”, while the winter months (October – February) were adjusted with “heating degree days”.
The values in Column 5 are the difference of Column 4 (expected kWh as adjusted for degree days) less the baseline data from Column 1.
The total expected kWh savings for Column 5 is 200, meaning that over the ten-month period, with no other changes to the system (and not allowing for manual thermostat changes), the facility should have used 200 kWh less than it did in the previous year.
Subtracting the expected kWh difference (Column 5) from the actual experience, (Column 3) shows the savings attributable to the SES system. As shown, the actual savings of 45,600 kWh is very close to the attributed savings of 45,400kWH. Overall, the total electric savings generated were $6,315.10
A similar analysis was completed for natural gas usage during the winter months and, as calculated, additional savings of $476.49 were obtained in natural gas use as well, for a total of $6,791.59 in savings over ten months. Extrapolated over a full year, the total annual savings would be approximately $8,150.