Thursday 29 March witnessed the third annual SDAR* Awards final, organized and hosted by the School of Electrical Engineering Systems in Kevin Street DIT. This is one of two major CIBSE Ireland applied research events intended to disseminate best practice in innovation and evaluation. As usual it was sponsored by John Sisk & Son and supported by bs news.
The second CIBSE applied research event is the IrishLighter/Young Lighter competitions and news of this event is detailed elsewhere on the bs news website.
Both events are growing in popularity each year. This is evident from the quantity of papers submitted, and also the quality of the papers. Industry now seems to realise that research is not just people in white coats in a laboratory but is applied real-world evaluation of new technologies and innovations in case studies.
The four finalists’ papers were all real world industry-based research papers. Presentations were very well received by both the audience and the panel of expert judges. The papers presented were:
Dermot Lyons, GSH
Establishing Current Energy Management Practices in Irish Manufacturing SMEs
Edel Donnelly, BDP
Comparison of Ice-bank Actual Results vs Simulated Predicted Results in Carroll Refurbishment Project DKIT
Stephen Timlin, BDP
Improved Automation Routines for Automatic Heating Load Detection in Buildings
James McConnologue, RTE Radio Telefís Éireann
Retrofit Energy Strategy for the Television Centre’s Chilled Water System.
The SDAR* Awards promotes collaboration between industry and academic institutions. At a pivotal time in the economy when companies require savings in all areas of expenditure to maintain trading, it is heartening to see such energy reduction potential offered from these critical evaluations. The idea is to move from ideologically-based ideas and innovations to proven value and energy reduction for clients.
The role of CIBSE is to facilitate this process and disseminate the findings. Credit also to staff in the School of Electrical Engineering in DIT, particularly Michael McDonald, for their organisation and collaboration in this work.
The well deserved winner this year was James McConnologue, from RTE, who presented a paper investigating the energy performance of a building’s chilled water system (CHWS), primarily focusing on the system’s direct electrical energy consumption.
The successful retrofit of the CHWS delivered an impressive cost saving of about e100,000 within the first year. This was achieved with a minimal capital investment of €3,400 for the purchase of a MODBUS interface. This paper will be available to view through the CIBSE Ireland website shortly and will also be published as part of the next SDAR* Journal. This will be issued in late summer or Autumn 2012.