“ENERGY MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC BUILDINGS”

Sant Cugat is a medium size city located just outside of Barcelona, with almost 90.000 inhabitants. As many other cities in Spain, the last few years Sant Cugat has growth quickly, in 1994 there were only 34.000 inhabitants.

The city has different kind of public buildings like schools, sport pavilion, administrative and cultural buildings, etc .At the end of the 20th century we had a lot of problems to get funding to improve our installations, only corrective maintenance was done so the installations were more and more ineffective. On one hand complaints from users happened increasingly due to the failure of the systems and the low thermal comfort, the continuity of the service in many buildings was a real challenge, and on the other hand the energy consumption was higher and higher.

Moreover the lack of information about the installations was another fact to be taken into consideration, no plans, no schemes, from some of the longstanding buildings no information was found, we didn’t know about the distribution pipes, duct, etc.

As far as the energy consumption concerns the situation wasn’t sustainable any more. We realized we had a huge problem and we initiated the process to change the situation, the first thing was to be aware of the situation not only from the technician side but from the politician side.

In 2005 the lucky was on our side and we got by chance a draft of what in the future has been the standard prescription rules of the ESCO model.

The feasibility of these kind of contracts were very low due to the lack of legal regulations, our legal department had to work hard to make feasible the draft prescriptions we had at that moment.

In the meanwhile and for almost a year we made an inventory and the functioning chart of all the installations, a general assessment was done, as of then we were ready to face the new public tender.

For every building we made the assessment and the minimum investments to be done were defined to be included as a compulsory in the regulation prescription to be implemented by the new company, on the basis of all this information the Municipality of Sant Cugat put the service out to a public tender at the end of 2006.

Situation prior putting the service out to a tender was:

• Low level of maintenance
• Obsolete installations and high number of breakdowns
• Lack of energy management procedures
• Low energy rate
• Lack of documentation
• Lack of specialized staff

Main work packages of the tender:

• Work package 1: Energy Management
• Work package 2: Preventive Maintenance and piping
• Work package 3: Corrective Maintenance and total warranty
• Work package 4: Investment Plan funding addressed to the improvement of the energy rate and sustainable development.

Scope of the tender:

• 16schools
• 9 sport pavilions
• 9 cultural buildings
• 1 theatre
• 2 museums
• 14 administrative buildings

Main features of the tender:

• Length of the contract: 10 years
• Thermal power: 7.4 MW
• Tender Price:
  • Work package 1: Energy Management. 473,016 €/year
  • Work package 2: Preventive Maintenance and piping. 184,010 €/year
  • Work package 3: Corrective Maintenance and total warranty. 95,813 €/year
  • Work package 4: Investment Plan funding addressed to the improvement of the energy rate and sustainable development. 158,325 €/year
• Minimum investment: 1,112,000 € to be done within the first two years.

After the tender the new contract was agreed with Veolia, the main features of the agreement were:

• Contract Price:
  • Work package 1: Energy Management. 363,040 €/year
  • Work package 2: Preventive Maintenance and piping. 194,320 €/year
  • Work package 3: Corrective Maintenance and total warranty. 87,444 €/year
  • Work package 4: Investment Plan funding addressed to the improvement of the energy rate and sustainable development. 216,533 €/year
• Offered Investment: 1,655,893 € to be done within the first year.

Exploitation analysis of the contract 2007-2015.

WP1. Energy Management

More than 50 % of the boilers and heating bumps were renovated

Monitoring systems and remote control were installed

Temperature sensors were installed and in some buildings also were installed Hr sensors and CO2 level sensors.

All installations were planned according to the schedules and set point temperatures required in the tender prescriptions rules.

Specific meters were installed just to know exactly the energy consumption of the heating and cooling systems.

Actually the municipality pay a flat rate for the energy, achieving directly savings around 30% of the total amount before the tender, savings are used to pay for the investments done.

The ESCO company took the risk and undertook the commitment to pay for the energy additional cost resulting from a poor management of the installations.

The comparison along the years has been done on the basis of variation of temperatures with regard to a reference temperature getting the heating and cooling degrees-day which allow us to compare similar conditions otherwise the analysis would be wrong.

Since 2007 18.95 Mwh of the energy consumption have been reduced what represents a yearly average reduction of 33.9% related to the energy consumption in 2007.

Since 2007 4,224 tn of CO2 emissions have been avoided.

WP2. Preventive Maintenance and piping.

To render a high quality service it’s necessary to have a steady, qualified and motivated staff. Nowadays our staff is composed by:

• 2 technical workers in charge of the maintenance and the tracking of the installations
• 1 engineer in charge of the management and exploitation of the contract
• 24 hours 7 days per week service
• External stakeholders for specific tasks.

WP3. Total Warranty.

According to the contract, the municipality has a total warranty for all the equipment, that means that in case of failure the company must repair them or renovate just in case it’s better for the energy management.

The goal is to have the installations in optimum conditions along the life of the contract. The Esco company also takes the risk of a poor corrective maintenance or a poor renovation plan that represent an increment in the energy bill that must be paid by them.

WP4. Investment plan.

The investment done was 1,655,893€ along the first year of contract and since then, the municipality pays the credit which is updated year by year according to the Euribor rate.

Moreover IT solutions have been present and necessary to allow us the monitoring and remote control of the installations.

Our case is a real case of public private partnership as a new way of funding new projects in cities allowing us a long term and continuous renovation plan to be implemented.

For more information please contact:

Víctor Martínez del Rey

Urban Quality Director

www.santcugat.cat

victormartinez@santcugat.cat