Case Study
British Library saves energy and money:
£30,000 reduction with SavenergyOnline
 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.
The British Library has 16 half hourly electricity meters located in buildings across
London and Yorkshire. In order to maximise the 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figures sent to me by the electricity supplier, which were a month out of date, and do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.”
Accurate data
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
exception reporting, 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 the relevant 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 smaller
sites, 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 cost-effective,
energy-saving service. We are in a win-win situation.”
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