ABSTRACT
It is an old adage of management that ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’, and while information from energy bills can be used in the energy audit, it may not provide a sufficiently fine level of detail and it is often necessary to have additional information taken from measurements of the conditions in the building, the state of the plant, and the energy consumption. Additional measurements can be carried out to evaluate the performance of individual items of plant. Monitoring a building over a short or even an extended period may be considered necessary in order to elicit this information. The equipment required for this purpose includes handheld instruments, data loggers and a range of sensors. A large range of instruments is now on the market and the measurements required for energy management can be made relatively easily; modern electronic instruments are compact, durable, and inexpensive. The main measurements of interest are:
• fuel consumption • temperature • electrical power • ventilation and air movement • water flow • relative humidity • heating efficiency • U-value.
