The Online Guide to Energy-Efficient Commercial Equipment addresses critical needs in three areas common to commercial buildings: lighting; heating, air conditioning, and ventilating systems; and energy-efficient motors.
• Lighting accounts for more than 40 percent of commercial sector electricity consumption in the United States. Its by-product, heat, has a great effect on air-conditioning loads. Best practice lighting provides equal or greater lighting quality while cutting energy use by up to 50 percent — even for buildings with fluorescent lamps throughout. Side benefits include improved building appearance and aesthetics, and also increased building asset value (for both owner-occupied and owner-leased revenue-producing space).
• Heating, air-conditioning, and ventilating systems have improved due to remarkable advances in the past decade. For small buildings, performance far better than building code requirements is widely available, often with integrated ventilation and "economizer" sections that improve air quality and control costs. For larger systems, the equipment is better — and there is also much more awareness of how to minimize "parasitic" loads like air handlers.
• Energy-efficient motors to handle building needs are much more easily chosen now because of new programs to certify premium motor performance.
Also addressed in the online guide are office equipment, packaged refrigeration, ice-makers, and distribution transformers. See the guide at http://aceee.org/buildings/coml_equp/index.htm.
