Lighting
This is another high end-use of electricity.
Consumption depends on office type, utilisation
of daylight, illuminance levels and hours of use.
In open plan offices, where no individual has
responsibility, efficient control of lighting is more
difficult, and so lights usually stay on much
longer than strictly necessary. Efficient
installations and good, user-friendly controls
should be the norm Office equipment
Most office workers have a personal computer
with dedicated or shared peripherals, and
networking. Leaving equipment on unnecessarily
– particularly overnight – should be discouraged Catering, electricity
It is worth reviewing power requirements of vending
machines and considering whether they can be
switched off when the office is empty. All-electric
catering kitchens should be compared with the
CO2 benchmarks for catering electricity and gas
combined, rather than the total delivered energy. | Other
Electricity use by lifts and ancillaries, such as car
park lighting and security systems, tends to rise
with the complexity and sophistication of the
building as a whole.
Air-conditioned computer suites and
communications rooms
The amount of equipment in the computer suite,
and thus the energy consumption, can vary
widely. A dedicated computer suite (or room)
should be accounted for separately to avoid
distorting the comparison with the benchmark.
In all cases, these areas and their air-conditioning
should be individually metered and checked to
ensure that the air-conditioning is performing
efficiently. Computer air-conditioning systems
are sometimes very wasteful. Typically, they use
as much electricity as the computer equipment.
In good practice installations, consumption for
air-conditioning can be reduced to about twothirds
of that used by the computers, and less if
close humidity control is not required. |
