Display Energy Certificate (DEC)

Get DEC certificates for Schools, colleges, universities, Leisure centres, Hospitals, Nursing homes, Public Libraries, Museums & Art Galleries.

All information here have been extracted from www.communities.gov.uk

DEC certificate Example

Table of Contents

1. What is a Display Energy Certificate?
2. Why Display Energy Certificates are required?
3. Buildings requiring a Display Energy Certificate
4. When Display Energy Certificates are required?
5. What an advisory report contains?
6. Penalties for not having a DEC certificate
7. Pre inspection questionnaire

What is a Display Energy Certificate?

A Display Energy Certificate shows the energy performance of a building based on actual energy consumption as recorded annually over periods up to the last three years. It contains two parts Rating and Advisory report.

A DEC certificate is valid for one year and must be updated annually.

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Why Display Energy Certificates are required?

The purpose of introducing Display Energy Certificates (DEC certificates) is to raise public awareness of energy use and to inform visitors to public buildings about the energy use of a building. DEC certificates provide an energy rating of the building from A to G

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Buildings requiring a Display Energy Certificate

A DEC certificate and advisory report are required for buildings that are occupied in whole or part by public authorities and by institutions providing public services to a large number of   persons and therefore frequently visited by those persons.

Public Authorities include:

• Central and local government
• NHS trusts
• Schools, colleges, universities
• Police
• Courts
• Prisons
• Army
• Executive agencies
• Statutory regulatory bodies
• Leisure centres (but not private clubs)
• Hospitals, Nursing homes, etc
• Municipal golf clubhouses
• Public Libraries
• Museums & Art Galleries provided by Public Authorities

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When Display Energy Certificates are required?

By 1 October 2008 you will need to display a DEC certificate showing an Operational Rating in a prominent place clearly visible to the public for buildings bigger than 1000 m2

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What an advisory report contains?

The advisory report contains recommendations for possible improvements, including cost effective measures for improving the energy performance of the building.

The report includes zero and low-cost operational and management improvements, to the building fabric or services, and opportunities for the installation of Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) technologies.

The report enables the occupier to identify what may be done to improve building energy management, building services, etc. therefore reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

The advisory report categorises the list of recommendations, by payback period as follows:

• Short-term payback (up to three years), for example building energy management measures
• Medium-term payback (three to seven years), for example upgrading building services
• Long-term payback (more than seven years), for example Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) technologies.

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Penalties for not having a DEC certificate

A local authority can issue a penalty charge notice of £1500 for failing to display a DEC certificate at all times.

In addition to these penalties, it will still be necessary to commission the documents; otherwise further offences will be committed.

What factors effect the display energy certificate rating?

DEC rating is mainly under influence of gas and/or electricity consumptiion.
In fact it is compltely differnt to EPC and SBEM calculations as in EPC calculations software make assumptions based on our input data and calculate heating, hot water and lighting energy consumptons based on standardized model and
in reality the actual building rating could be worse or better than calculation result.Furthermore in EPC calculation we dont see effects of electric utilities and gas cookers either.
In the other hand in Display Energy Certificate calculation we base the calculation on actual meter reading and we never make any assumptions and we never create any standardized model.

However it is still not the perfect model. One of the main problems with DEC is we can not show effects of renewable energy in software if we are not sub-metering the units, it means if we have CHP units but we dont have the meter readings for electricity or gas we can not benefit from these systems.
another huge problem with DEC is when we calculate the display energy certificate software automatically compare it to the benchmark and provide us with a comparition which we called rating, but we might have some facilities in our site which might not be included in the benchmark, unless we sub meter these areas seperatly we can not omit them from our calculation, this problem normally cause much worse rating than actual building.

Unfortunataly the meter reading is the only input to the DEC software.It gets much more complicated when we look at the reccomendation report in display energy certificate, as in recommendation report we go throw all of the systems in the site and briefly identifing the systems conditions.Suprisingly reccomendation report has no effect on DEC rating and as you
realize it doesnt mater how good or bad your utilities are as long as your bills showing a low consumption you get a good DEC rating and vice versa.

The only factors effects the DEC are as below:
Gas and/or electricity consumption, total floor area of the building, building type and benchmark, metered renewable energies on the site, too little for such an important document.
Also simillar to EPC, SAP and SBEM, DEC is been created for comparition purposes only, so you can just compare the rating of one site to the one with identical application. For example you can just comprae swimming pool No1 to swimming pool No2 not to the school next door.You cant even compare the DEC and EPC from the same site as they are two differnt certificates and based on two completely differnt calculation methodology.

Display energye certificates are renewed every year and because of that, it is possible to monitor and compare the energy consumption in the site and observe any improvment.Also the recommendations in the display energy certificate are quite good some are free or very cheap to perform so even after a year some improvments are possible to achieve.