TUDI Helps Florida’s Water Crisis.
Think about your air conditioning system. A water cooled system uses large amounts of water in the cooling tower to make up for evaporation and drift losses. You as the building owner are paying for this. At the same time, water is draining out of your air conditioning unit after the air stream is cooled and going down the drain. TUDI has a solution.
At a local high-rise building, we are currently installing a water collection system to recover the condensate water from the building HVAC system and reuse it for make-up water for the system cooling towers. For every 1 ton of cooling/hour, the system will collect ½ gallon of pure water to be reused for cooling tower makeup. This means that you do not have to pay the water company for this. At the same time, it is conserving a valuable resource that is in such critical demand.
A typical 1,000 ton per hour plant would yield 500 gallons of water. Your rate of return depends upon your local utility rates. TUDI can also include a meter on the collection system so you can track water savings in your building management system.
Why dump good water down the drain when you can reuse it and put the savings in your cashflow!!
Contact TUDI to learn more today.
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The Benefits of Leasing
Some business owners are hesitant to upgrade their heating and cooling systems because of the high upfront costs. But leasing offers you an opportunity to "buy now" so you can start saving on fuel as soon as possible.
Because leasing is not a capital expenditure, it allows a business to free-up working capital. Leasing offers a host of other benefits as well:
- Monthly payments on a lease are considered an expense whereas a loan is considered a debt.
- Tax savings: the equipment bought on a loan is depreciated over several years, but the monthly lease expenses can be deducted in the current year.
- A lease allows you to avoid large cash outlays to upgrade HVAC equipment.
- Most lease payments are tax deductible as a pre-tax business expense
- Municipal customers and tax exempt customers often qualify for special financing rates.
With so many advantages over an upfront purchase, leasing of HVAC equipment is an option that businesses of every size should consider. Contact TUDI today to learn more.
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How old is your boiler?
Boilers that are 15 years old or older are considerably less efficient than newer units. As a result, they burn more fuel and cost you more money. In fact the single-most important step you can take to reduce fuel use is replacing your old boiler.
Improved engineering of fuel-burning technology has produced significant enhancements that, taken as a whole, have made boilers far more fuel efficient than in the past. Some of these include:
- Electric ignition that eliminates the need for a pilot light to burn continuously
- New combustion technology that extracts more heat from the same amount of fuel
- Sealed combustion that uses outside air to fuel the burner draft and improve safety
- Multiple or modulating boilers (that) improve seasonal efficiency compared to a single
- Condensing boiler with efficiency of 90% minimum
If you're ready for a new boiler, it really pays to buy equipment that will pay you back in increased fuel savings. Generally speaking, you want a unit with an AFUE (Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency) of at least 80%. TUDI Mechanical can teach you all about new boiler options, and help you select the best equipment for your needs. Please contact us today.
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To cut energy use, look at fans and pumps first.
Pumps and fans are the largest source of energy consumption in a typical commercial building; they are also one of the areas you should look at first when trying to reduce energy usage.
When you want to determine how you can cut horsepower (hp) without affecting effectiveness, here's a good rule of thumb:
Horsepower (hp) is reduced by the cube root of CFM or gallons per minute (GPM).
For example: a 20% reduction in flow is equal to a 50% reduction in hp.
A reduction in gallons per minute can also save water for the cooling tower system. Other benefits include less evaporation, less blow-down, less make-up water, and less chemical use. Once CFM is reduced, the result can be less outdoor air entering the system, which will result in lower gas and electric usage. This is done through variable frequency drives (VFDS), a control which is specifically designed to reduce energy consumption. Every building owner wants to reduce energy consumption, but they don't want to sacrifice performance; that is why, when it comes to cutting energy use, contractors should pick the "low hanging fruit” and look at pumps, fans and VFDs first.
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Use "free cooling" to reduce power costs.
Cooling with a rooftop unit can be costly, but there's a way to lower energy bills when the weather permits; it's called an economizer.
Economizer systems allow you to take advantage of good weather and cut energy costs by introducing cool outdoor weather into your building. This is known in the business as "free cooling", a strategy that has the potential to save as much as 20 to 25% in cooling costs when properly implemented.
Here are a few common questions we hear on this topic:
Q. What is an economizer?
A. It's an accessory product for RTUs consisting of dampers, sensors, actuators and controls that work in concert to decide how much outside air to bring into a building.
Q Can an economizer be added to an existing RTU?
A. Yes. You can add an economizer to an RTU as a retrofit. This is usually a pretty simple job. Part of the job includes adding a Co2 sensor to ensure healthy indoor air quality.
Q. Are there other benefits to an installing an economizer?
Yes. Because the mechanical cooling part of the system runs less, there is less wear and tear on the compressor. This can add to equipment life.
Q. How much energy can this device save?
That depends on a lot of factors, where the building is located, how it is constructed, how it is used and what kind of HVAC equipment is installed. Some building owners have realized savings of as much as 25%. To achieve maximum savings however, you should consider installing a demand controlled ventilation (DVC) system as well.
Q. What are some other steps I can take to increase air quality and reduce energy use?
A. Change filters regularly. This is perhaps the least expensive thing you can to keep your equipment running efficiently. You should also consider ERVs and HRVs. Energy and heat recovery ventilators reclaim energy from exhaust airflow while providing fresh air to the building.
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A range of incentives for business owners.
There are many sources of funding designed to help business owners make energy efficient improvements to their properties. In addition to state and federal grants, there are tax credits, rebates, low interest loans and tax deductions based on deprecation. Here are some examples of current incentives for commercial property owners.
For a more complete list of incentives, go to http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm.
State Grants and Loans: In July 2008, Pennsylvania enacted a broad alternative energy bill designed to provide support for a variety of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, including solar, fuel cells, Included in this legislation was a provision authorizing the creation of a $25 million grant and loan program for high performance buildings. Grants in this program are available for up to 10% of eligible project costs or $500,000. Applicants may request both a grant and a loan, but not for the same project.
Federal Tax Credits: Under the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 (H.R. 1424), enacted in October 2008. Commercial property owners can apply for federal tax credits for solar energy, fuel cells, small wind-energy systems, geothermal heat pumps, and combined heat and power (CHP) systems. credits of up to are available for eligible systems placed in service on or before December 31, 2016.
Energy-Efficient Commercial Buildings Tax Deduction: The federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a tax deduction for energy-efficient commercial buildings that has been extended through the year 2013.
A tax deduction of $1.80 per square foot is available to owners of new or existing buildings who install (1) interior lighting; (2) building envelope, or (3) heating, cooling, ventilation, or hot water systems that reduce the building's total energy and power cost by 50% or more.
As a result of the worldwide focus on energy efficiency and climate change, there have never been so many opportunities for business owners to make energy efficient improvements. Your energy-savings partner at TUDI Mechanical will be glad to tell you more about these incentives, and help you decide what steps you can take to reduce your energy costs as soon as possible.
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What's a "carbon footprint" anyway?
The term "carbon footprint" isn't just a buzzword; it refers to the Co2 output of every fuel-burning device, building or machine. Because this term has important implications for every business owner, here are some key points to help familiarize you with the concept.
* For every MCF of natural gas that is burned by your business, approximately 117 lbs. of Co2 is produced.
* The average two-person household releases 63,000 lbs. of carbon into the atmosphere every year
* Trading in "carbon credits" is a central component of an emissions trading approach to greenhouse gas reduction. One carbon credit is equal to one ton of carbon.
Carbon credits are a key component of the system of emissions trading (also known ˜Cap and Trade"), which is an administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants.
We often hear about Co2 emissions or a carbon footprint described in terms of a car, but here are some other ways to understand this concept:
The computer is a good small context unit.
1 kWh per day (Treehugger.com and other sources)
1.55 lbs or .705 kg of CO2 per day (Energy Star)
365 kWh per year or 566 lbs (257 kg) of CO2 annually, taking 0.049 cars off the road.
There is no peripherals like monitors and printers since way too many factors contribute to a huge value range if one calculated such a thing.
The fridge is a good medium-small unit.
3.79 kWh per day (Union of Concerned Scientists, quoted per year)
5.87 lbs or 2.67 kg of CO2 per day
1,383 kWh per year or 2144 lbs CO2 (974 kg) annually taking 0.18 cars off the road.
The fridge takes up 11-14% of household energy consumption so it's practical for a lot of every life things (US Dept of Energy says 14, NRCan says 11° probably colder in Canada so more energy consumed per house so bigger base in Canada).
The tree is a good medium unit.
17 kWh electricity generated from fossil fuels absorbed per year (from data just below)
26 lbs or 12 kg CO2 absorbed annually (United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP)
Trees are so different in their CO2 absorption abilities, and varies over their life times individually, that it is almost ludicrous to get an "average" tree. However, UNEP endorses this stat so let's hope they've done their research since the source is not known to me.
The home is a good medium-large unit per day.
Canadian home at 34.5 kWh/day or 2.0 trees/day or 739 trees/year, based on fridge value and % above.
American home at 27.1 kWh/day or 1.6 trees/day or 581 trees/year (158 trees difference to Cdn value)
Weighted average, 10:1 US to Can population, would be 27.7 kWh per day (1.6 trees/day, 595 trees/year)
The car is the big unit, but only because it's a per year stat.
11,560 pounds or 5,255 kg CO2 per car per year (Energy Star)
438 trees a year
0.74 homes per year
CO2 from cars is direct, whereas homes consume energy indirectly from electricity from fossil fuels, or burn logs to produce CO2 directly.
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