New York Energy $mart^SM Offices Project

Step Two: Develop Preliminary Estimates of Savings

The outreach materials provide typical estimates of savings that may be used to spark interest in the program. The next step is to conduct an equipment inventory and to calculate your kWh electric costs to develop a preliminary estimate of potential energy bill savings for your facility.

Inventory Equipment

The first step to estimating your savings potential is to obtain an accurate inventory of existing equipment, annual purchases, and the proportion of equipment that are ENERGY STAR® . Table 1 summarizes the information required for your equipment inventory in a format to facilitate data entry for the Smart Office Calculator.

The best sources of information—and your starting point—are typically Purchasing (procurement) and IT departments. While a complete equipment inventory is the best way to estimate savings accurately, the Smart Office Calculator can provide reasonable savings estimates based on quantities of major plug-load equipment, if more detailed data is unavailable.

Calculate Your Electricity Costs per kWh

Your equipment inventory should provide the number of computers and monitors within a building to be targeted. However, you also need to know how much your organization pays for electricity on a cents-per-kWh basis to estimate total energy cost savings. If you have an energy expert, you may be able to conduct a fairly sophisticated analysis of your energy bills to estimate how the total energy savings will affect monthly bills including demand and energy charges. In particular, metered data by building and/or floor is particularly useful in analyzing total plug-load electric usage.
For purposes of developing a rough estimate of total saving, you can also calculate your cost of electricity on a cents-per-kWh basis by following these steps:

1. Collect two to three months' of electric bills for the buildings that have the majority of office equipment.
2. Find the total dollar amount for the billing period (excluding any charges from previous billing periods that are still owed). This total dollar amount will include all costs such as fixed charges, demand charges, and other fees.
3. Find the “Total kWh” of energy used for that billing period.
4. Divide the total dollar amount for the billing period by the total kWh to estimate your average cost per kWh for electricity in office buildings.

This information may also be available from the energy manager or the administrative department that pays your energy bills.

Table 2 identifies the average prices that several New York State counties pay for electricity. If you are uncertain of your rate, select either the Energy Benefits Calculator's default rate setting of 11.8 cents, go to http://www.dps.state.ny.us/TypicalBills.htm for rates, or use the rate of a similar facility.

Conduct a Preliminary Savings Analysis

The Smart Office Calculator estimates the potential savings from enabling the power management features of existing energy-efficient office equipment (personal computer, monitors, printers and copiers) and from turning off non-essential equipment in those equipment categories at night. These are the easiest savings to estimate and the quickest to implement at little or no cost. Additional savings may be achieved by replacing equipment that is not ENERGY STAR® but these savings are typically smaller than those available from power management and shutdown of existing equipment.
The Smart Office Calculator allows you to calculate savings at three stages or levels, beginning with the first level, which is the least data-intensive, and recommended at this stage of developing preliminary estimates of savings.

1. Level One. This minimum level requires only two inputs: (1) the quantities of equipment and (2) the price of electricity in cents per kWh. This level is typically sufficient for preliminary estimates of savings to obtain support for implementing the program. The data requirements are minimal since the model provides default data on power management and equipment shutdown from the New York Energy $martSM Offices projects, from U. S. EPA research in other states, and other national research to develop a quick first analysis of key plug-load equipment.
2. Level Two. This is the most customized level, requiring users to enter their own data from on-site equipment audits and monitor polling software to tailor the analysis to provide facility-specific energy savings estimates. The audits check the current status of office equipment in your facility including the number of machines that remain on in “Full Power,” the number of machines that are in “Low/Suspend” mode, and the number that have been completely turned off after hours or when not in use for a period of time.

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