MISSISSAUGA’S RACE TO REDUCE: OPTIMIZING ENERGY USE

NRU
May 3, 2017
Sarah Niedoba

The City of Mississauga’s energy management team has launched a year-long energy optimization program for city buildings, effective last week.

The Race to Reduce initiative will track the electricity, gas and water use in 20 city buildings, with the intent of driving down energy consumption across Mississauga. The program will rely on recently installed real-time utility monitoring systems, which use activity-meters to create up-to-date energy profiles for each building.

“This is the best way to reduce energy use, because you cannot manage what you cannot measure,” says energy management manager Daniela Paraschiv.

The program will also enable the building’s operational staff to become better acquainted with the new monitoring technology.

“We want our staff to be fluent when it comes to the technology,” says Paraschiv. “This is the tool that we’ll be using to optimize our energy use, so we want them to know it extremely well—this program will help them to do that.”

The program will run for a year, and during that time the energy management team will be looking for trends in consumption that can be linked to real-world solutions.

“We want to be able to look at the numbers and say, ‘What happened with this increase in water consumption?’” said Paraschiv. “Once we determine the cause, then we can address it.”

Possible solutions include modifying a building’s operating schedule to better match peak occupancy times— if a community centre has a low occupancy in the morning, changes to heating levels in different parts of the building can be made to reflect that. This could also mean less wear and tear on the equipment in general, leading to fewer repairs for the city.

Ultimately, however, the goal is to optimize energy consumption while improving occupants’ comfort—if all goes according to plan, complaints in the buildings will be reduced, as temperature begins to better match building occupancy.

“The benefits are major,” says Paraschiv. “We will be able to reduce our operating costs, and minimize our impact on the environment at the same time.”