In industrial applications gas boilers are still important while renewables are growing slowly

March 26, 2020 by Leave a comment


BSRIA has researched the market of industrial boilers – boilers used for industrial processes and/or district heating in seven major countries: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and China.

Despite dynamic progress on renewables in many other heating markets, gas boilers still remain the most prominent product in the industrial segment.

The use of ground to water, water to water heat pumps and energy from waste heat is growing and they are increasingly becoming installed in a primary system. However, gas and to a lesser extent, oil or biomass boilers are used most often as a secondary source for a backup system to either provide an operational safety related redundancy level or to support the peak load demand.

Gas boilers still benefit from lower investment cost and even though technologies that use renewable energy sources are increasing their penetration in the industrial segment, current research supports the view that gas boilers will keep playing a significant role in the market in the next decade.

China, with its nearly 50,000 units sold per year is the largest among the researched markets.  Following government push towards reduction of air pollution, there is a significant shift in sales from coal to gas boilers. The country has a preference for large output boilers while in Western Europe BSRIA sees the opposite trend, with smaller capacity, condensing boilers gaining significance.

boilers

Heat networks are an important and growing segment for industrial boilers; they accounted for some 20% of all industrial boilers sold in 2018. In all seven researched countries, industrial processing in chemical, food and cement industries is also growing in prominence.

As technology progresses the value of the industrial boiler market is growing, moreover, in all countries the service and maintenance part of the business is also growing significantly. Focus on energy efficiency supports the trend towards regular seasonal check and more frequent upgrades.

In terms of technology, most industrial boilers sold in the researched countries are fire tube units.

By Socrates Christidis,
Senior Market Analyst, Worldwide Marketing Intelligence, BSRIA Ltd


Notes to editors:

 

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Filed under Heating

The European BACS Market – Looking Up?

March 18, 2020 by Leave a comment

 

BSRIA’s Worldwide Market Intelligence has just published updates to its Building Automation Controls (BACS) studies for four key Western European Markets: Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The studies confirm that, while each market has some special characteristics, there are some important common trends.

As of February 2020, BSRIA was forecasting strong growth in all four markets, though unfolding events, including the coronavirus, could have an adverse impact. In the period 2019- 2024 the forecast ranges from 3.1% to 4.8% CAGR depending on the country. The strongest growth is forecast for Belgium and Spain, reflecting in part the economic recovery after a difficult period in the latter.

Forecast Growth for Four Key European BACS Markets: % CAGR 2019 – 2024

BACS market 2019-2024

Source: BSRIA Research

 

The effects of economic conditions are currently open to a lot of uncertainty, especially given the possible impact of the coronavirus pandemic which, according to some analysts, could potentially spark a serious global recession. The UK’s exit from the European Union still leaves considerable uncertainty about the long-term relationship between the two parties as negotiations for a new trade deal have started with substantial differences of opinion in many key areas.

However, there are some clear technology developments that are driving change, supporting building controls markets.

Software and analytics are becoming increasingly important and strategic. In three of the four markets, BACS software is growing faster in value than the total BACS market. In Germany and Spain, the growth for this segment is twice as fast. Since software is increasingly bundled with the wider service offering the actual importance of software to BACS is even greater than the crude sales “numbers” for software suggest. Increasingly, the quality and value of a BACS supplier’s products and services will depend on the capabilities of the software deployed to manage a building more intelligently and proactively.

While there is a move to the Cloud and more specifically to Software as a Service (SaaS), the great majority of software sold remains server-based, ranging from 75% in Spain to more than 90% in Germany, the latter figure reflecting the cautious nature of much of the German market.

Controllers, particularly DDC controllers are increasingly freely programmable, with the vast majority of all products being at least configurable. This enables controllers to be used for a wider range of applications and scenarios.

The advance of the Internet of Things is reflected in the fact that, increasingly, field devices are capable of being easily connected to the internet. This is especially true of larger and more complex devices. In all four markets, BSRIA research found that over 60% of Air Conditioning Units had an inbuilt capability of being connected to the internet. However, this capability was currently being used only in a minority of cases where there was a direct benefit in connecting to the net.

One key measure of the move towards “smarter” buildings is the extent to which HVAC, which has traditionally been the core application of BACS, has converged with other key building systems, allowing common and coordinated control. For example, to maximise energy efficiency while maintaining a comfortable working environment it makes sense to manage HVAC, lighting and blinds via a common system.

Our research showed that while convergence is increasing, in Germany and Belgium the majority of new buildings with BACS still focused purely on HVAC applications. While, BACS refurbishment or retrofit projects were less likely to be converged, a substantial and growing minority are now linking HVAC with other building services.

In key European Markets, BACS projects are showing increasing convergence

European BACS Markets showing increasing convergence

Source: BSRIA research in Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and Spain – 2019

 

In all the markets researched the BACS products form part of a much larger market embracing both other products and labour. The labour component typically represents about half the market value, in some cases more, and many of the larger BACS suppliers are focusing increasingly on the service element of their delivery.

Once labour and other products are factored in, the BACS industry is worth almost 2.5 billion US dollars across Europe as a whole and will be increasingly central to the development of both artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

By Henry Lawson,
Senior Analyst, Worldwide Market Intelligence, BSRIA Ltd

 

Notes to editors:

To learn more about these trends, please view BSRIA’s 2020 update of its well-established BACS market reports.

To find out more contact us at:

 

 

Filed under Building Management

Thermal Imaging helps improve energy efficiency in building design

March 17, 2020 by Leave a comment

Energy efficiency in building design

Buildings account for approximately 40% of the total energy we use. Based on this statistic, even a small improvement in energy efficiency in our buildings could have a huge impact on the environment. 

A reduction in the amount of heat that escapes through a building envelope is one of the most important aspects of energy-efficient building design. Keeping the heat within the confines of the conditioned area removes the necessity to supply more energy to the space. 

On the flip side, the problem of overheating suggests that heat, and energy production, within a lightweight structure needs to be carefully managed for fear of increasing the internal temperatures to uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous levels. It is implied that the cost of cooling a space far exceeds the equivalent cost to heat a space. 

In an effort to keep the heat inside the building, a strategy to ensure attention to the airtightness and insulation detail throughout the construction process should be incorporated at the design stage. Consequently, to ensure that any negative effects associated with possible overheating and moisture ingress due to such an airtight structure are kept to a minimum, the construction must be designed with an appropriate ventilation strategy.

Challenges of different construction methodology

Construction methods face individual challenges when considering the design of an energy-efficient example of its product. 

The design and construction of volumetric modules, for example, have huge efficiency benefits when considering the increased production and uniformity of manufacturing on an assembly line. However, the transport of each module and the assembly of multiple modules on-site can introduce areas of weakness in the overall building fabric that would not be apparent in the factory. 

When considering a timber frame, the junctions between frame elements can be subject to unexpected stresses and movement as the natural timbers settle into their new environment. These movements, no matter how small, can introduce significant air leakage paths into the building fabric and therefore have a negative contribution to the thermal performance of the finished building.   

In both above examples, rigorous quality testing should be performed to ensure the quality of the finished building, proofing that it has been built and assembled to the designed specification.  

Image: iRed

Airtightness Testing verifies the quality of building fabric

Airtightness testing demonstrates the ability of a building to hold air. The test generally involves using a fan to measure how much air needs to be blown into a building to achieve a certain pressure; a building with a more airtight building fabric will require less air through the fan. The value of the result, which is referred to as the permeability of the building fabric, is required by Building Regulations to have a maximum value of 10 m3h-1m2, although most buildings are specified at a lower level at the design stage to achieve a lower EPC (Energy Performance Certificate). The government stipulates that all new buildings must be airtightness tested before handover to ensure quality control. 

Airtightness testing is a very good way to verify the quality of the building fabric. However, it can only quantify how much air is coming through your building fabric and does not inform where the air leakage paths are. In contrast, thermal imaging can tell you where the air is leaking but it cannot quantify how bad the air leakage is.  Performing both is therefore providing full set of information that is needed to ensure that the designed specification is achieved. 

Image: iRed

How Thermal Imaging can lead to improvements in energy efficiency

Thermal imaging process of the building fabric implies the use of a thermal imaging camera to observe and assess the thermal performance of building fabric elements. It allows us to ‘see’ the effects of the heat generated by items around us, and to ‘see’ the areas of the fabric that have the lowest thermal performance.  

When used to survey the building fabric, the camera shows temperature variations on the surfaces of the construction elements that suggest locations of air leakage, areas of thermal bridging and locations where the insulation continuity is broken. Each of these issues will have a detrimental effect on the thermal performance of the building. The anomalies found during the process often represent an area of the building that has not been built to specification. Highlighting them allows the rectification and subsequent improvement works to take place before they become a problem to the occupier.  

The use of airtightness testing and thermal imaging is a relatively quick and cost-effective way to verify the performance of the building fabric of the finished building, be it an assembly of volumetric modules or a “completed and wrapped” timber frame. 

Any thermal anomalies found during these surveys can be rectified before the building is occupied. If no anomalies are found, then the building has documented proof that it has been built to the specified standard. This should mitigate overall disruption and ensure occupier’s satisfaction.

The information collected during the survey can be fed back into the design process and further improvements can be made in future iterations of the product. In this way, these diagnostic tools can be used not only to maximise the energy efficiency of the current building but can also be used to improve the design and construction process of future projects. 

Joe Mazzon
Research Engineer 
BSRIA

For more information on Thermal imaging and Airtightness testing please contact: thermography@bsria.co.uk or call 01344 465578

Filed under Uncategorized

Why use Business Focused Maintenance?

March 3, 2020 by Leave a comment

Why do we do maintenance? Is it to keep our assets in optimum working condition? Do we do it to make the equipment last longer? Perhaps the main goal is to prevent failures? If it is for any of these reasons you may find that you are working to an outdated ethos…

BSRIA has recognised and employ a more pragmatic approach for today’s business needs. BFM recognises that the building services’ equipment is installed to provide a service, thereby allowing a business function to be maintained. It analyses the business needs and consequences of failure first and foremost. This ensures that business function is maintained with the minimum of intrusive maintenance to minimise maintenance induced failure, otherwise it is traditionally assumed that the built environment’s asset failure follows the bathtub curve below.

BFM

There are standard specifications for maintenance within the building services industry that have been updated over the years such as SFG20. This is used by many organisations to enable them to tender for outsourced maintenance on a like-for-like basis. The main drawback from this approach is that the maintenance delivered would be generic across the site. This can increase costs and/or reduce the availability of human resources. Couple this with the often-quoted statistic that “70% of failures are due to ineffective maintenance” and it begs the questions to be asked over purely time-based PPM frequencies.

BFM recognises that the need for maintenance generally arises from business needs such as

  1. Complying with legislation
  2. Minimising health and safety risks
  3. Minimising business risks
  4. Managing business continuity
  5. Responding to business and customer requirements
  6. Adding value as part of the business process
  7. Reducing overall business costs
  8. Maximising whole life cost
  9. Increasing asset / system availability
  10. Increasing operational up time

Users of BFM – first published as a BSRIA Guide in 2004 – have demonstrated increased system availability and greatly reduced costs. There is a structured, six-step process to follow where the client and BSRIA work collaboratively to

  1. Assess business needs and consequences of asset failure
    • The goals of the business and the needs of the end users are assessed to ascertain which assets are crucial, and therefore the impact on the business of assets failing. The structure of BFM allows for this task to be done as objectively as possible and logged on a numeric scale of 1-10. 1 is a low consequence and 10 is a high impact on business continuity.
  1. Document functional block diagrams and assess functional resilience
    • review the systems and assess their ability to continue to meet the needs of the business when a failure occurs.
  1. Assess asset condition
    • A full condition survey as per BG 35/2012 taking into account all relevant influences on an assets condition, to provide a remaining life expectancy.
  1. Calculate likelihood of failure
    • converts the alpha-numeric score from tasks 3 and 2 to a 1-10 score via conversion table 6 in the BFM guide BG 53/2016.

BFM1

5. Calculate BFM score

    • combine the score from task 1 (BC) with the number calculated in task 4 (L) to give a BFM risk score on a scale of 1-100.

BFM2

6. Review of PPM tasks and frequency

    • Apply scores to the agreed level of risk set by the organisation. From this a revised maintenance schedule can be drawn up. BG 53/2016 suggests the following;
      • 1-9 Discretionary maintenance for non-critical assets
      • 10-40 Legal compliance and sector specific requirements
      • 41-100 Maintenance to provide the greatest level of confidence in asset reliability, performance and availability.

bfm5

Whilst every job is different, an indicative timeline can show you that BFM can very quickly make it’s impact on businesses.

The business-focused maintenance methodology challenges the planned preventative maintenance frequency of building services plant. The assessment methodology takes into account plant history (age, condition, failure history, plant loading, and maintenance history), the number of standby plant items (redundancy), and the level of resources available.

Many of the intrusive maintenance tasks can be replaced by Condition Monitoring (CM) which in turn leads to Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). The actual practice of CM is far quicker in terms of man hours than time-based PPMs and often involves zero down time to the asset and therefore no impact to the business. In addition to the usual array of gauges on an asset or its BMS sensor display that can be used to monitor plant performance, common CM methods include thermal imaging, vibration monitoring, acoustic emission monitoring and lubricant analysis.

Regular use of these methods at appropriate intervals can be far more cost effective than regular time-based generic intervals, whereas for non-critical plant, the most cost-effective maintenance methodology may be to run-to-failure. By applying the BFM methodology, you can be confident that you have selected the most appropriate maintenance technique for the services in your building.


This article was written by Nick Blake – Principal FM Consultant at BSRIA.

For more information about our research on maintenance and facilities management, please contact: consultancy@bsria.co.uk

To download our publication on Business Focused Maintenance (BG53/2016):
please click here>>

BSRIA's publications on maintenance and facilities management

 

Filed under Building Management, operation and maintenance Tagged with , , ,

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