Dubai: Do you want to reduce your operating costs? The easiest way is to ensure your building is energy and water efficient and you can actually check this through a free audit.
The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) reminded government, commercial and industrial sectors that it is providing free Energy Audit to help them take advantage of available high-efficiency technology solutions that could make their consumption efficient and reduce their utility bills.
The service is part of Dewa’s efforts to reduce electricity and water use in the emirate as part of the Dubai Demand Side Management (DSM) Strategy that aims to reduce energy and water use by 30 per cent by 2030.
Dewa has assigned a dedicated team to do the Energy Audit for 50 buildings for 2018. Applications for these categories are welcome until the target number for 2018 is completed.
“We encourage everyone to adopt a responsible lifestyle in electricity and water use. To achieve this, Dewa launches a full range of innovative initiatives, programmes, and awareness activities for the residential, commercial, industrial and government sectors, to encourage society to adopt positive behaviour in their daily lives,” said Saeed Mohammad Al Tayer, CEO and managing director of Dewa.
“This will contribute to reducing electricity and water consumption and support our efforts to protect the environment, reducing the carbon footprint and ensuring the sustainability of our natural resources for generations to come,” he added.
Dubai has an existing building stock of 150,000 that need to be retrofitted to become greener and more sustainable as per the DSM Strategy. More than 3,000 buildings are being retrofitted currently, according to the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy.
However, before a building can be retrofitted, the building has to be audited first to ensure all target areas are covered including lighting equipment, air-conditioning, water connections, among others.
Al Tayer noted that Dewa conducted the energy audit for 257 buildings between 2011 and 2017.
The buildings implemented most of the electricity and water consumption rationalisation measures recommended in the energy audit reports. This resulted in accumulative savings of 153 gigawatt hours of electricity and 355 million imperial gallons of water, equivalent to saving 75,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, and planting 85,000 trees.
Losing savings
Building owners that don’t retrofit based on the audit reports are losing savings of a minimum of 20 per cent to a maximum of 70 per cent in their utility bills every year, every month, Ali Al Jasem, CEO of Etihad Esco, told Gulf News earlier this month.
To put this number in perspective, for example, one project for Dewa for six power stations resulted in 74 per cent savings or 6.82 gigawatt hours equivalent to Dh6.82 million in 2016.
Who can avail this free service?
Government, commercial and industrial customers. Residential customers are excluded.
How does it work?
1) Visit the Dewa website to book for a FREE Energy Audit request — https://www.dewa.gov.ae/en/customer/services/consumption-services/energy-audit-request
2) Provide the necessary information: contract account number, building name, gross floor area, and the number of buildings to be audited.
3) Once approved, a special team will be sent to the area to observe and gather all the necessary data. All data will be analysed and issued in an audit report that will be given back to the client with recommendations.
4) Once he receives the report, the client is advised to inform Dewa’s energy efficiency engineers on their plan of action and its progress until completion of implementation.
Dewa has also introduced the ‘Do it Yourself – Energy Audit’ service, where customers collect the required information according to the service manual and send it to Dewa’s Energy Audit team. The same process is followed from #2.
