How monitoring stimulates energy reduction: practical tips
Organizations can read their energy meters themselves and analyze its consumption. Especially the night-day consumption and the differences per week are interesting. It is also possible to install smart meters. With this you automate the process of reading energy meters and you can also view the quarter-hour values if necessary. An energy monitoring system goes one step further. In this article we give practical tips for organizations how to use energy monitoring for energy savings.
Internet of (Energy) Things
More and more companies are having an energy monitoring system installed. Such tools not only continuously record energy consumption, but also report abnormal situations (for example; lights on on Sunday afternoon). The systems can also control the indoor climate (boilers, air conditioning), indoor and outdoor lighting and presence detection according to need. Thanks to IoT (Internet of Things), everything can be controlled centrally or increasingly more via a smart phone. As a result, settings can be quickly and possibly temporarily adjusted to the situation. This is how you can offer employees and your customers more comfort.
Reduce energy bill
According to research by the EU, regularly re-adjusted boilers lead to energy savings up to 30%. The average saving is 9% per year. In this way you create financial possibilities for investments in your core activities. Business activities do not have to be paused to install a monitoring system. With a good operating system you can participate in the demand response services of some energy suppliers and reduce your energy bill even more.
Practical tips
- Measuring allows you to focus on those energy consumers that really matter. By not wasting time with less important energy consumers, you avoid costs and time.
- Energymonitoring is certainly a potential for savings. By measuring you can distinguish between large and small energy consumers and focus on the most important items.
- With a smart meter, a lot of data at company level is immediately available. Log in to your energy company and analyze the differences in consumption per month, week or day. Also assess whether the off-peak or nighttime consumption is low enough.
- Shops, offices or even production companies of the same owner can install similar measuring and control modules in all their sites and control them centrally. That saves costs and you can easily benchmark: which site consumes the least and is “best-in-class”? How do I get the other sites to that level? Use co-creation and gamification to further reduce energy consumption.