Question: what parts of the office building eat up the most energy?
If you say heating… you might not be right!
According to a recent study conducted by the CCR, (Compagnie des Contractants Généraux), for the typical office building, the trend appears to be significantly reversing. Read on.

Due to regulations, insulation of office buildings has become increasingly efficient. At the same time, improved technology has led to installation of heating/cooling systems with better performances.

The electrical consumption for the heating and cooling   of an office has gone down year after year and can in some cases account for less than 30 % of total consumption! For systems such as the latest generation of heat pumps, performance coefficients (PC) reach a value of 4 in heating mode and 3.5 in cooling mode. As a reminder, a PC of 4 means that a machine produces 4 kW of heat for 1 kW of electrical power used.
Other areas of energy consumption lie with lighting, IT equipment and annexes such as controlled mechanical ventilation, domestic hot water…

Keep in mind:

• Installing low-consumption lighting such as 3x14 W in T5 tube, in comparison with standard lighting such as the 4x18 W type results in annual savings of up to 17 % of the total building consumption.
• Installing double flux ventilation (photo) with recovery heat exchanger, as compared to single flux ventilation means annual savings up to 12 % of total building consumption.

These surprising results emphasize the importance of paying careful attention in choosing the right equipment for office buildings. The biggest energy consumers are not always what you may expect !

 We will be focusing on this subject in an upcoming Newsletter GSE.
Source CCR: www.groupeccr.fr , contact Sébastien Degorre, head, Pôle Energies CCR.