We measure what a building actually uses, find where it is being wasted, and fix the items that pay back. Where the payback does not work, we say so.
In most Saudi commercial and industrial buildings air conditioning is the largest single electrical load, frequently more than half of total consumption. That makes it the only place worth starting, and it also makes it the place where guesswork is most expensive.
Almost every energy proposal a building owner receives starts with a product. Replace the chillers, fit this controller, buy this film. We start with a measurement, for two reasons. Without a baseline there is no way to prove a change worked, and without metering it is impossible to tell the difference between a genuine saving and a cooler month.
Green Flash installs and maintains the plant as well as assessing it, so we know where the compromises usually are: a chilled water systems plant staged badly, pumps running flat out against throttled valves, a fresh air systems system left at design ventilation rate around the clock. Finding those costs a survey, not a capital project.
Measured kilowatts per ton under real load, not the nameplate figure. Condenser approach temperature tells you how fouled the machine is, staging and sequencing tell you whether the plant is running three chillers at part load where two would do, and chilled water reset tells you whether it is making water colder than the building has asked for.
Constant speed pumps pushing against throttled balancing valves are burning energy to create resistance. Fan and pump power follows roughly the cube of speed, so a modest reduction in flow produces a large reduction in power. Variable speed drives, variable primary flow and correct impeller sizing are usually the best value items on the whole list.
Plant running in an empty building at night and over the weekend, setpoints being fought between the building management system and local controllers, dead bands so narrow that equipment hunts, and zones heating and cooling at the same time. These cost nothing to correct and they are found on almost every site we survey.
Fresh air is conditioned from the outside condition every hour it is introduced, so ventilating at the design rate when the building is a third full is a permanent and invisible cost. Demand controlled ventilation and recovery on the exhaust stream are covered in detail on our fresh air systems page.
We walk the plant, then install logging where there is none: power at the plant, chilled water flow and temperatures, space conditions and run hours. Then we leave it alone and collect several weeks of data. Nobody can recommend anything useful from a single afternoon on site.
The data is normalised for weather and occupancy so that one month can be compared with another honestly. Waste is then ranked by what it costs per year in riyals, not by percentage, because a large percentage of a small load is not worth anyone’s capital.
Control and scheduling corrections first, because they cost labour rather than capital. Then low cost items: variable speed drives, sensors, condenser and coil cleaning, water treatment put right, balancing redone. Equipment replacement last, and only where the measured performance justifies it.
After the work, consumption is compared against the normalised baseline over a meaningful period and reported in kilowatt hours and riyals. If a measure did not deliver what we expected, the report says so. That is the whole point of baselining it first.
Green Flash Engineering and Contracting has completed over 21 major projects across Saudi Arabia, supported by teams operating in Jeddah, Riyadh, Yanbu, Rabigh and King Abdullah Economic City. We install, commission and maintain the plant we assess, across industrial, healthcare and pharmaceutical and retail and hospitality buildings, which is the difference between an audit that produces a document and one that produces a corrected system.
We supply and install Automated Logic building management systems, so where a site already has a BMS we work with the system that is there rather than proposing to replace it as the first step. Our ISO 9001 certified quality system produces the commissioning records and logged data that a verification claim has to stand on.
Related work: chilled water systems selection and maintenance, VRF systems, and refrigeration plant where process cooling is part of the load.
None, before we have measured. Any contractor who quotes a percentage on a building they have not metered is guessing, and the number is chosen to win the job. What we will commit to is a measured baseline, a ranked list of measures with the cost and the expected payback for each, and verification afterwards against that same baseline.
Usually not, and certainly not first. Fouled condensers, bad staging, failed sensors, water treatment that stopped and control setpoints nobody has reviewed in years account for a large share of what looks like worn out plant. Replacement is the last item on the list, considered when measured performance shows the machine itself is the problem.
Control and scheduling corrections can take effect within days of the survey. The metering period before that usually runs a few weeks, because a credible baseline needs enough data to normalise for weather and occupancy. Capital measures follow their own procurement and installation programme.
Yes. We supply and install Automated Logic and we work with other systems already installed. In most cases the existing BMS is capable of far more than it is being asked to do, and the first gain comes from using it properly rather than replacing it.
Send twelve months of electricity bills and a description of the plant, or just send us the details and we will arrange a survey. The first conversation costs nothing and it will tell you whether there is anything worth chasing.
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