£30 000 saving for British Library
February 1st 2006 Although the British Library has reduced energy consumption by 15% over the last four years, fuel prices - and therefore energy costs - continue to climb. Like all organisations, the Library has had to improve its ability to reduce wastage to try and lessen the financial impact. With SavenergyOnline from Stark Software International it achieved a £30 000 reduction in energy costs
The British Library has 16 half hourly electricity meters located in buildings across London and Yorkshire. In order to maximise a reduction in waste and costs usage data was needed fast and accurately without waiting for the monthly energy invoice, in order to see where further savings could be made.
Environmental manager, Gerry Goldner, explained: "Originally I had to rely on the figures sent to me by the electricity supplier, which were a month out of date, and do all the number crunching myself. What I needed was speedy and accurate data and software that would run the analysis for me."
In February 2004, the British Library appointed Clarity, the Elexon-accredited HHDC operated by Stark Software. At the same time, the Library also signed up to Stark's web-based reporting service, SavenergyOnline. Clarity retrieves data from the half hourly meters every night, and the previous day's consumption information is available via the web-based bureau service the next morning.
To access the data, all Gerry Goldner has to do is input his user name and password. "With SavenergyOnline I get speedy, up-to-date and accurate data that is available the next working day," he continued. "What's more, it's in an easy-to-read graphical format, that makes it very straightforward for me to validate our electricity bills and to query any anomalies in them. No need to spend ages looking at rows and rows of numbers! And the set-up cost is zero."
Automatic exception reporting - SavenergyOnline allows Gerry Goldner to run a variety of reports which can profile the British Library's electricity usage by half hour, hourly, or by day, week and month. For example, he can compare the data in a weekly report with what happened the previous week or with the same week last year.
"The beauty of SavenergyOnline is that it also provides me with automatic exceptionreporting, so I can immediately pick up anything that's not running as it should be,"added Gerry. "For instance, if the consumption figure for one of our sites deviates from the expected profile, I get an email alerting me. I can then talk to therelevant person on site, find out what happened, and put in place measures to stop it happening again."
"This type of exception reporting feeds through to reductions in waste and costs. The savings are at least £20 000 per year - and rising as costs increase."
Additional Savings - The information that SavenergyOnline provides has shown that, on the four smallersites, there is a definite pattern of usage. As a result, the Library decided to opt for a seasonal time of day contract profile, where the summer time costs are considerably lower than standard 2 rate profiles, but where the charges between 4pm-7pm in the winter rise sharply. At the flagship St Pancras building, winter time demands can be managed lower, giving even more reduction in costs. The additional savings are at least £10,000 per year.
Gerry concluded, "SavenergyOnline has proved to be a highly costeffective, energy-saving service. We are in a win-win situation."
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