Know Your Power Output

Several years ago I became hooked, or some might say even obsessed by the sport of triathlon. I think the year was 2012, which would have meant I would have been a 15 stone, almost forty something.

I promptly registered for the cycle to work scheme and spent a whopping £300 on the heaviest bike my local bike shop had to offer. Suspecting that swimming would be my Achilles heel, I set about swimming like a madman.

Moving on a few years and I have raced a couple of half Ironman’s and even completed a 10k swim. Racing and training for these events has put me in some dark places. But all the time I have had the company of my evil psychopath constantly planting his doubting opinions in my ear.

My Evil Psychopath

For those of you not in the know. An evil psychopath is the voice of doubt in your head. However, he can be used to motivate you. My evil psychopath is called Kevin, I don’t know why he is called Kevin. Did I name him, or was that my subconscious?

I shall introduce you further to Kevin in future blogs. Although I must warn you that he can be an arsehole at times. What I should perhaps address was why I became so obsessed with all things triathlon. The answer to this is very simple.

Triathlon has many parallels with energy efficiency because so many triathlon gains are made through being more efficient. Triathlon is all about managing your energy performance over the 3 disciplines of swim, bike and run. As such, triathlon was speaking my language.

If someone said to me for example, that improving my swimming technique would reduce my swim time by 10%. I was sold. If I bought a pointy cycle helmet, I would save 10 minutes over 40k. I was sold. If I shaved my legs’ I would gain another 2 minutes. Yep, you’ve guessed it….. Bought the razor blades….Sold!!! If I wore bright pink lycra???? Sold!... I don’t even need a reason. Because……..

Real men wear lycra

A lot of elite triathletes talk about execution, which essentially means delivering on the technical aspects of the race. Which I think lends itself nicely to energy efficiency. How are we checking that our buildings are executing at their most efficient levels?

Yesterday, I was witnessing lighting readings in a sports hall prior to those lights being upgraded to LED. The purpose of the witnessing was to determine the lighting level before the upgrade has been matched post upgrade.

Whilst I was in the sports hall, I noted that the air handling system was on. I have a history of managing leisure centres and as such I am aware that some sports halls have air handling systems and some don’t.

My view is that in the majority of cases air handling systems in sports halls do not need to be engaged and as such are a waste of energy. In this case I suspected that the air handling system was controlled via a time schedule, a set flow rate and a temperature set point.

I have two issues here. Firstly, any amount of heat pumped into the sports hall would have risen into the ceiling and would have been of absolutely no benefit to those in the hall. Particularly as the sports hall ceiling was a good 45ft high.

Secondly, the sports hall accommodates the usual array of sports. Five a-side, netball, basketball, arm chair aerobics, mini cricket, table tennis etc. Do all of these sports have the same ventilation (air change) requirements? Absolutely not.

Is your building executing at its most efficient level?

The point I am making is that the sports hall air handling system is definitely not executing at its most efficient level. I fully intend to challenge this and suggest switching the air handling system off to see if anyone notices.

My argument for this is that I have known countless sports halls without air handling systems. Do these sports halls play different sports? I think not.

Getting back to the title of this blog. Know your power output. Do we know the minimum power outputs of our buildings? Is this a bit like zero accounting where we start with nothing and work our way up? Does the energy management of buildings need to take a similar approach?

As I have said in previous blogs, I firmly believe in taking the approach of challenging absolutely everything we do. However, as with many things in life it is about finding the right balance between running efficient buildings that serve the needs of their occupants.

The picture below is of Gwen Jorgensen, an absolute hero of mine. In 3 years, she came from absolutely nowhere to dominating the ITU World Triathlon scene, winning the World Championship twice and the Olympics in 2016.

I believe she accomplished this because she has a comprehensive understanding of her power output and had worked out the most efficient way of executing that power. Imagine what we could achieve if we could follow the same formula for our buildings.

Gwen Jorgensen understood her power output