Energy Matters

A local hotel owner, spying a deal, purchased an air makeup unit, at auction, for the restaurant in his hotel. The unit had been salvaged from a community club, but was in excellent working order and the price was a mere fraction of what he would have paid for a new unit. Unfortunately, he lost a great deal of money on the transaction.

First, the unit was sized far too large for his operation (10,000+ sq. ft for the community club, 240 square feet for his kitchen, 800 sq. ft. for the secondary room, his dining room. Second, he directed the output directly at the wall where his thermostat was located, meaning that the temperature setting did not reflect the room temperature.

Third. He had his air conditioning unit set separately from his furnace, with the heat set to engage at 20C (68F) and his air conditioning set to start at the same temperature. Consequently, both ran simultaneously.

Fourth, his cold air draw was behind his grille, so cold air was drawn over the heating unit, requiring more energy to operate the stove while creating hot and cold spots for cooking. With the size of the air makeup unit, the breeze was substantial.

Three simple solutions reduced his energy costs by over $1,900 per month: adjusting the thermostat properly, relocating the thermostats to a non-direct wall where there was representative air movement and installing a smaller pulley on one end of the drive-to-fan link on the makeup unit to slow it down.

Usually, it is the simple solution that saves the most money, but those are the solutions that are most often overlooked in developing an energy conservation program.

In the same manner, business owners often neglect preventative maintenance programs, assuming that they are a cost rather than an investment. But preventative maintenance programs cut operating costs, cut capital cost for equipment replacement and reduce down time that results in poorer quality or lost sales. Like the old Fram filter advertisements, “you can pay me now, or pay me later.”

Energy conservation and energy management programs should be simple to implement and easy to maintain. However, almost any program to conserve will pay for itself almost immediately and should be one of your business’s top priorities.