How Can Energy Monitoring Save Me Money?

The companies who provide the billing metering for your organisation will, on request, provide a secondary output from the meters, in the form of a switch. Every time the switch operates it represents a unit of energy used. By connecting that switch to our software it will monitor and record the energy you consume second by second. You can then view this information in a variety of easy to understand ways. You can also add your own private or sub meters, no matter what the energy type, to the system in the same way. The graphs can show energy used and what time it was used each day, week, month and year. By monitoring energy and resources you can see when and where money is being wasted. Our studies of numerous commercial buildings have often shown 50% or more energy is consumed when the building is closed. A similar story can be found on industrial premises with regards to machines on standby, when they should be off. The monitoring system is used to expose waste occurring now and to check that it does not return at a later date. The money saved goes right back to the user in the form of improved profit and efficiency and/or reduced annual costs.

When using our monitoring systems customers can discover if ...

They have been overcharged by their suppliers for energy or resources
Electrical appliances and machines are being left on when they should be off
Their Building Energy Management System is not operating as expected
They have expensive water leaks that show no obvious visual signs

Electricity Example

This chart shows the electricity used each day as bars. The red bar is the energy used when the building is open. The grey bar is the energy used when the building should be closed and using little or no energy. As can be seen energy, and therefore money, is being wasted each night and every Saturday and Sunday. This data is from a real site and is typical of what the system finds.

Gas Example

This bar chart shows an eight day view running Monday to Monday of the gas energy used. Each bar represents the energy used in a 30 minute period. The blank days are Saturday and Sunday. They will not be blank if the Building Energy Management System (BEMS) fails to turn off the boiler over weekends. The optimum start on the BEMS was the problem for this customer and it is clearly not operating correctly. The boiler is coming on just after midnight each day, when it should be starting at about 7:30am (the green bars) in these conditions. The gas used also shows the building is up to temperature within 30 minutes! The heating also continues after 4:00pm (the red bars), a waste of 40 to 50 percent in this real building example.

Water Example

This Bar Chart shows an eight day view of water consumption, again Monday to Monday in 30 minute periods. Water can be clearly seen to be used 24 hours a day and over the weekends, when the building is closed. No water should be used during early morning or at night on weekdays and no water at all should be used over the weekend. This graph showed the site had a major water leak, even though no pools of water could be found. The leak was into a drain which was not visible to staff. On a number of occasions we have effected savings of around 80% on water used, although meter readings failed to highlight any problem.