NOT ALL STUPID QUESTIONS HAVE STUPID ANSWERS. (Best practice for ESOS Site visits )

An essential part of energy advice is to gain an understanding of the client’s operations and processes enough to ask ‘why’?  An assessor will rarely know more than the manager or process engineer, but a fresh pair of eyes and a reasonable comprehension of what is going on can lead to a ‘stupid question’ hitting the mark.

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One of the things I love about being an ESOS Lead Assessor is the enormous variety of places I visit for energy assessment. I shan’t name names, but I often say my highlights are a top flight football club, one of the poshest shops on Bond Street and an entire port. I have also been a pharmaceutical plant that turns out paracetamol by the million, the real world factory equivalent of the Wallace and Gromit ‘Knit-o-Matic’, and the place where they make rattlesnake anti-venom. And of course, quite a lot of offices, care homes and car dealerships.

And when I arrive at these places I usually warn that, as well as doing the energy balance and looking for energy savings, I might also ask a few ‘stupid questions’. Because in any form of advisory consultancy, the consultant should have a good understanding of what is going on, and in our case, where, why and how energy is being used in the systems and processes of the client. As well as the basic HVAC, controls and fabric, we should also be looking at the commercial activity and trying to find an opening for a saving.

The ‘stupid questions’ usually take the form of “why”, and in particular ‘Why do you / don’t you ….. ?’  This is not about the equipment, but about the process, and in ninety percent of the occasions there is an immediate answer. It is also the kind of question that has to be referred up the management chain – is it practical, is it safe, what oESOS site visit - finding energy savings in client operationsther changes will need to be made?  Therefore in the reporting, this can only be presented as a proposal: an idea for the production managers and process engineers to follow up. In the following examples I have no idea whether my ideas and suggestions were implemented or not.

A good ‘fresh pair of eyes’ challenge is for equipment left switched on “just in case” but not actually operating  .

The first example is a production engineer who kept a older and inefficient furnace operating continuously as a standby, just in case his main modern and reliable machine went down. If they left the standby switched off, it would take a couple of hours to heat up and come online.  The question is whether the energy saving from leaving the standby furnace switched off  is greater than the risk of a couple of hours of disruption if the main machine goes down. There was a big potential saving in energy, but only they could decide whether it was worth it.

Likewise the Heathrow cargo depot of an airline operating out of the far east. They kept a large coldroom at about - 6 degrees ‘just in case’ something arrived that needed refrigeration. But surely this would not be a surprise ?   If refrigerated cargo was put on a flight to Heathrow, couldn’t they call ahead, maybe even a day or two in advance, and warn their UK colleagues that the coldroom was needed?  Again a couple of hours might be needed for the coldroom to reach - 6, but almost certainly less than the flight time from, say, Tokyo?   The question is whether systems could be put in place to warn Heathrow of an incoming refrigerated cargo so that the coldroom need only be switched on when required.

As I write, another more recent instance comes to mind. A steak restaurant opens at noon and puts all its grills and ovens on full, ready to cook. But there are no customers expected, and no bookings until the evening. The hobs and grills might be roaring away for hours before an order appears.  This particular chain has central booking over the internet, so each restaurant should have full information on when a booked customer will arrive. And even if the customers are ‘walk in’, the process of being shown to a table, taking and serving a drinks order, looking at the menu and taking a food order should give ample warning to the kitchen to light the gas and get ready. I suggested that there might be no need to put the hobs and ovens on until a customer actually crossed the threshold of the restaurant. But of course, they will have to decide..

These and several other examples are not proposing new or better equipment, or changes to controls and settings. They arise from studying and learning about the business process, and making a suggestion to change it.

A well studied question ‘why’ may not be so stupid after all.