Saving Energy Through The Accumulator Effect

For several years I have been aware of and championed the significant potential energy savings of what I like to refer to as “The Accumulator Effect”.?In simple terms the accumulator effect is the benefit which occurs when something is repeated multiple times.

Life coaches often talk about the benefits of making and repeating small sustainable changes on a daily basis.??If you have listened to Tony Robbins on YouTube, you will know he often asks “What are your Rituals?”

Mr Robbins question is making reference to the things you do on a daily basis to impact a better more productive life.?For some people rituals include awaking at 5.00am, yoga, or other exercise, meditation or reading.

So my question is “Can a building adopt daily rituals to improve energy performance through the multiplier effect?” before we get on to this lets talk about some examples of the multiplier effect.

When I was an Environmental Manager for a multi-site leisure Centre company, I started looking at building opening/closing procedures.??I knew from my own experience that when Duty Managers opened buildings, they typically turned all building lighting on at 6.30am.

The lighting would remain engaged until the building was locked and closed. This included sports halls where we had multiple 500watt high bays fittings.?Sports hall lighting being turned on at 6.30am seemed incredibly wasteful considering the sports halls were generally not in use to 9.00am.

Sports hall lighting remaining on until 11.30pm (when the building closed) when activity generally ended at 10.00pm also seemed wasteful and presented us with the opportunity for some significant and easily achieved energy savings.

I knew the sports hall lighting was switched on in the mornings to allow staff to sweep the halls and set up equipment.?Armed with my building knowledge we instructed staff to radio reception to turn of sports hall lighting once the necessary sweeping and setting up of equipment had taken place.?

We also encouraged staff to actively switch off sports hall lighting at 10.00pm or after the last booking had finished.

Did this action save a lot of energy??You bet it did!!!!

Through a change in our rituals, we were able to use the multiplier effect to duplicate a significant energy saving on a daily basis. So ,what were the savings??Well in one leisure centre alone we had a lighting load of 30kW across 4 sports halls.

Therefore:

30kw x 2 hours saved per day x 350 days a year = 21,900 kWh

At today’s rates this equates to a financial saving of ￡6,570.?Achieving this saving involved undertaking some awareness training with our staff ￡500.?However, as the action of switching of sports hall lighting when not required was repeated daily (as a ritual) it quickly became the culture.?Project payback was achieved in 28 days.

Some years later I found myself undertaking energy management in a scientific institution.?The institution used ultra-low freezers (ULT’s) to store scientific samples.?The vast majority of the ULT’s were set to minus 80c.

I became aware that storing samples at -70c rather than -80c, achieved an energy saving of 3 kWh’s per day.?3 kWh’s saved per day sounds like a drop in the ocean.?Until you consider the multiplier effect.

The particular scientific institution I worked for had 160 ultra-low freezers.?Therefore, the potential saving gained from raising their set point to -70c was staggering.?See below;

160 units x 3kWh/day x 365 days = 175,200 kWh

At today’s rates this equates to a saving of ￡52,560.?The cost of achieving this saving was negligible as we could get the lab managers to undertake the changes to set points.?

The savings we achieved with ultra-low freezers represents a great example of a small saving multiplying up into a much larger saving through the multiplier effect.?

Successful awareness campaigns work hand in hand with the multiplier effect to compound savings.?Writing about this now I can’t help but thing about the impact our language has on the success of our activities such as awareness campaigns.

We know that awareness campaigns can be highly cost effective.?However, we also know, most awareness campaigns fail or work only for a limited time.?Psychology must have an impact on this.?Can we compound psychology through better use of language?

Has anyone written a book on the psychology of energy saving??Now that I would like to read.?