ENERGY AUDIT AS A BASIS FOR IMPROVING ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY SAVING OF HEATING SYSTEMS

Nowadays, improvement of energy efficiency and energy saving are especially relevant under conditions of constant growth in energy resources prices and economic dependence of Ukraine on their imports. Ukraine belongs to the countries that have reserves of almost all types of energy resources. At the same time, the economic sector of Ukraine is ensured by fossil fuel of own production only by 40-50%. Technical conditions of the country’s energy sector are morally and physically outdated (60-70%). The heating industry of Ukraine is in a critical condition. Despite the numerous amounts of adopted laws to reform the heating industry, operation of heating systems continues its negative impact on the socioeconomic and environmental spheres. Technical state of the heating systems fund buildings does not meet the requirements of operation. The operation period of 22% boilers is longer than 20 years; the efficiency of almost 40% boilers does not exceed 65-75% (natural gas) and 70% (coal). State of thermal networks is unsatisfactory as well, heat losses during transportation by the thermal networks account from 5 to 32%. All the above factors are caused by the imperfection of the organizational and economic mechanisms of the industry’s production, supply of thermal energy and their regulation. It leads to the degradation of the communal heating. Energy audit of heating systems provides separate stages, which permit to inspect and assess the objects involved in the district heating, to estimate reserves for energy resources saving, to calculate the cost and technical efficiency that will raise the resources use efficiency. During the audit of the district heating systems in each of the following stages the existing sources and possible causes of thermal energy wastes are analyzed, the investment development projects are carried out, tariffs for thermal energy are justified. Carrying out the energy audit of the centralized heating systems will allow reducing the use of energy resources, heat losses while generating and transmission, and the technogenic burden on the environment. The energy audit will also allow defining priorities, cost-effective and prospective ways of increasing energy efficiency. Its introduction in the stages of generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of thermal energy will allow reducing the technogenic environmental pollution. Implementation of the energy audit will allow optimizing economic relations between the market participant’s and municipal services and will provide more efficient use of energy resources. One of the key targets of the State energy policy in the field of heat supply is improving energy efficiency and energy saving. Carrying out the energy audit of heating systems is one of the ways to achieve this goal. The paper describes heating systems as an object of the energy audit. The main stages of the energy audit process are defined. The basic laws regulating the energy audit process are analyzed. The paper also describes the mechanism of stimulating efficient use of thermal energy at the consumption stage.