An empirical study of electricity and gas demand drivers in large food retail buildings of a national organisation

AbstractFood retail buildings account for a measurable proportion of a country's energy consumption and resultant carbon emissions so energy-operating costs are key business considerations. Increased understanding of end-use energy demands in this sector can enable development of effective benchmarking systems to underpin energy management tools. This could aid identification and evaluation of interventions to reduce operational energy demand. Whilst there are a number of theoretical and semi-empirical benchmarking and thermal modelling tools that can be used for food retail building stocks, these do not readily account for the variance of technical and non-technical factors that can influence end-use demands.This paper discusses the various drivers of energy end-uses of typical UK food retail stores. It reports on an empirical study of one organisation's hypermarket stock to evaluate the influence of various factors on annual store electricity and gas demands. Multiple regression models are discussed in the context of the development and application of a methodology for estimating annual energy end-use demand in food retail buildings. The established models account for 75% of the variation in electricity demand, 50% of the variation in gas demand in stores without CHP and 77% of the variation in gas demand in stores with CHP

Energy consumption prediction models for the retail sector

The ability to analyse and accurately forecast future events is becoming increasingly important as most management decisions depend on them. This is especially evident for the retail sector, mainly because of the small margins that the sector is working within, alongside the increasing prices of electricity and gas. Tesco, as the market leader, wishes to be at the forefront of research and make a step change in their ability to forecast and reduce the energy consumption of their buildings. This work presents the various benchmarking methods available in the UK, Europe and the US, including CIBSE TM46, ISA, and ASHRAE benchmarks. The mathematical techniques employed to access the predictions obtained using these benchmarking and forecasting methods are discussed as well as the analysis and forecasting methods used by the industry. The research reported throughout this paper uses energy data obtained from the Tesco estate to draw correlations with weather, sales’ floor area, sales and other factors that might affect the energy consumption. Initial results regarding the effect these factors have on the energy consumption of buildings in the Tesco estate are presented

Relative Impacts of Adult Movement, Larval Dispersal and Harvester Movement on the Effectiveness of Reserve Networks

Movement of individuals is a critical factor determining the effectiveness of reserve networks. Marine reserves have historically been used for the management of species that are sedentary as adults, and, therefore, larval dispersal has been a major focus of marine-reserve research. The push to use marine reserves for managing pelagic and demersal species poses significant questions regarding their utility for highly-mobile species. Here, a simple conceptual metapopulation model is developed to provide a rigorous comparison of the functioning of reserve networks for populations with different admixtures of larval dispersal and adult movement in a home range. We find that adult movement produces significantly lower persistence than larval dispersal, all other factors being equal. Furthermore, redistribution of harvest effort previously in reserves to remaining fished areas (‘fishery squeeze’) and fishing along reserve borders (‘fishing-the-line’) considerably reduce persistence and harvests for populations mobile as adults, while they only marginally changes results for populations with dispersing larvae. Our results also indicate that adult home-range movement and larval dispersal are not simply additive processes, but rather that populations possessing both modes of movement have lower persistence than equivalent populations having the same amount of ‘total movement’ (sum of larval and adult movement spatial scales) in either larval dispersal or adult movement alone