Energy audit software
Energy audit software saves time and increases profits
The background
AJ Energy, a Colchester based SME, specialises in providing advice on the efficiency of energy installations in new build residential and office developments. They use the Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure to calculate the impact of integrating energy saving measures in new-build housing developments.
The issue
AJ Energy’s key area of work is the preparation of documents to demonstrate how proposed building projects meet local and national energy targets. Typically, their clients are presented with a number of options which generate different environmental and financial impacts. Often this process requires two or three meetings as calculating different installation scenarios are too complicated to provide clients with an immediate, on-the-spot assessment of their potential savings. The company wanted a software solution that would quickly and effectively calculate the impacts of different energy saving measures, using the Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure.
"If we’d gone to a commercial software company, it would have taken longer and cost a lot more. It was an adventurous timescale but Amit was so good and dedicated that we got a lot more than we ever expected."
John Simpson, Director AJ Energy.
The solution
AJ Energy Director John Simpson learnt about six-month Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) after visiting a University of Essex stand at a business fair. That led to a link-up with Dr John Woods, from the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering. “Once we understood the company’s requirements, we knew immediately that we had the expertise to help,” says Dr Woods. “The idea was to develop a stand-alone piece of software from scratch, which would require fewer inputs and produce an accurate energy ‘audit’ within minutes rather than hours.” A client’s available options – covering factors such as different heating systems, insulation and renewable technologies - would then be confirmed through more detailed calculations. AJ Energy and the University jointly recruited software developer Amit Walinjkar to work on the project under Dr Woods’s supervision. Getting the right associate was crucial.
The benefits
The new software, concludes John Simpson, “has made us 25 per cent more productive, saving us and our clients valuable time. It can take rival consultancies two or three meetings to determine how best to help a client to meet local or national energy targets during planning applications or with existing buildings. We can now do this during the initial consultation. We’ve also been surprised at the programme’s accuracy. The difference between the initial forecast and our later, more detailed assessment is never more than a couple of percentage points.”
Who to contact
Please contact Knowledge Exchange Manager, Jenny Young for more details.
