Hi Everyone,
I'm looking into a prescriptive incentive program for compressed air for a utility's demand side management. Non-prescriptive programs use data logging and metering in order to obtain plant average/pk cfm and kW. However, I'm looking into ways of automating this for smaller/single compressor systems and so the goal is to obtain energy usage (and savings from an effecient vs. base case) with minimal inputs and no data logging.
My only problem area is estimating avg/pk cfm (or avg/pk LF) through inputs that plant staff would know fairly easily. Are there methods that plant staff use to estimate this w/o logging/metering?
Some ideas I had were:
#1: base off industry - using previous projects, obtain avg/pk cfm for average in that industry. Not terribly accurate but other utilities just assume a load factor of 40% across the board so it's an improvement
#2: base off end uses - program will ask plant staff to tally up the type, number, op hrs and size of their end uses and then use that data to guess at avg/pk cfm (or LF)
Any ideas or input anyone had on this would be greatly appreciated. Also, as this is a prescriptive program we don't expect to get 100% accurate cfm/LF values, but something within reason. (as said before other utilities use a 40% LF for all cases...so anything that is a little more accurate than that is good) And the inputs from plant staff have to be as quick and easy as possible in order for the program not to deter people from using it.
Thanks for any help that you can provide!
I'm looking into a prescriptive incentive program for compressed air for a utility's demand side management. Non-prescriptive programs use data logging and metering in order to obtain plant average/pk cfm and kW. However, I'm looking into ways of automating this for smaller/single compressor systems and so the goal is to obtain energy usage (and savings from an effecient vs. base case) with minimal inputs and no data logging.
My only problem area is estimating avg/pk cfm (or avg/pk LF) through inputs that plant staff would know fairly easily. Are there methods that plant staff use to estimate this w/o logging/metering?
Some ideas I had were:
#1: base off industry - using previous projects, obtain avg/pk cfm for average in that industry. Not terribly accurate but other utilities just assume a load factor of 40% across the board so it's an improvement
#2: base off end uses - program will ask plant staff to tally up the type, number, op hrs and size of their end uses and then use that data to guess at avg/pk cfm (or LF)
Any ideas or input anyone had on this would be greatly appreciated. Also, as this is a prescriptive program we don't expect to get 100% accurate cfm/LF values, but something within reason. (as said before other utilities use a 40% LF for all cases...so anything that is a little more accurate than that is good) And the inputs from plant staff have to be as quick and easy as possible in order for the program not to deter people from using it.
Thanks for any help that you can provide!
