This summers energy saving – conclusions part 1

This summers energy saving – conclusions part 1

My name is Shuji Imura and I work in the environmental department.

Just as I was beginning to appreciate the refreshing arrival of autumn, there was in fact a report that even severer energy saving measures than those taken during the summer would be required through the winter. Kondo-san’s blog post (Sept 12th) focused on the importance of continuing energy saving efforts.

This and the next blog shall cover the results of our energy saving efforts.

Energy saving awareness

With the energy saving activities underway, one of the main problems was to raise awareness within the company. Ideally we wanted steadily increasing understanding of the changes in the office environment, leading to various individual energy saving efforts however, we formed a patrol group to provide a degree of structure.  Patrols were selected for each group in close contact, aimed at determining and carrying out energy saving measures.

Concrete measures were taken such as partially turning off air conditioners and lighting, or shutting down the air conditioning and opening windows and providing general cooling with outside air.  This proved a workable solution on several days during the summer, and it is an approach we expect to use again in the future.



Member of our Energy Saving Team wearing the official armband

Increasing awareness

There is a strong desire to keep up the energy saving activities.  We are used to being in spaces where there is too much lighting and air conditioning, and we weren’t particularly conscious that it had changed. Then, the environment to which we entrust our comfort is an unnatural space. It was the exchange of opinions with architects working on office buildings that led me to believe this. Their opinions differed from ours in that they were about how to create a comfortable space with a more natural low-tech system (plants and fans, and evaporative cooling using wet cardboard).  This gave us the idea to implement a “green project”.

Although I think the aims were good, hydroponics using ivy was more difficult than we expected, and it sometimes wilted. We will try again next year but with some improvements. 

Energy saving results (based on estimated monthly power consumption)

Of course, this summer the reduction of peak demand was important with this summers energy saving efforts peak demand for electricity dropped however, we are tenants in the building, so we the only results we could get from last year was the our total power consumption from the electricity meters making it easy to make a comparison. Overall we achieved reductions of 30%!

We have data on this summer’s peak demand from a real-time power monitor which we installed so, I’ll be looking forward to hearing about that in the next blog on the mechanical aspects by Nakamura-san.

Shuji Imura, Environmental Group