Energy Audits: A Workbook for Energy Management in Buildings

Energy efficiency is today a crucial topic in the built environment – for both designers and managers of buildings. This increased interest is driven by a combination of new regulations and directives within the EU and worldwide to combat global warming. All buildings now must now acquire and display an EPC (energy performance certificate), a rating similar to the A–G rating given to white goods. But in order to understand how to be more efficient in energy use, you need first to understand the mechanisms of both energy requirements and how energy is used in buildings. Energy Audits: a workbook for energy management in buildings tackles the fundamental principles of thermodynamics through day–to–day engineering concepts and helps students understand why energy losses occur and how they can be reduced. It provides the tools to measure process efficiency and sustainability in power and heating applications, helping engineers to recognize why energy losses occur and how they can be reduced utilizing familiar thermodynamic principles. The author describes the sources of energy available today; explains how energy is used in buildings – and how energy is lost – and how this can be controlled and reduced. Investments in energy efficiency are considered for a number of case studies conducted on real buildings The book explains the theory; illustrates it with case studies and worked examples; and then tests students’ understanding with tutorial problems. This is an invaluable resource for students on engineering and building courses where energy management is now a core topic.