Save Money with Smart Metering
Q. I understand that smart meters provide data that can help utility companies deliver better service. But what benefits do smart meters offer me as a building owner?
A. It’s true that smart meters are helping utilities improve the grid’s efficiency and reliability. But smart meters also offer significant tangible benefits to commercial property owners:
- Smart meters provide essential data to quantify energy costs. What you can’t calibrate, you can’t manage. Smart meters give you the calibration capability to analyze usage patterns — which is the first step to lowering energy costs. The data that smart meters provide also shows you the building’s “energy signature” — its unique pattern of energy consumption. Smart meters produce interval hourly data that can enable property owners to match actual usage with real market costs, which lets owners identify each building’s true cost of energy on an hourly basis. A property’s unique data guides pricing strategies and choice of load management reduction technologies like battery energy storage and combined heat and power (CHP). Having more data available may also help improve your building’s ENERGY STAR rating (which can in turn boost a building’s value).
- Smart meters are essential technology. Smart meters produce 15-minute (and instantaneous) interval meter data that provide tools to intelligently reduce energy expenditures. Utilities use 15-minute-interval data to determine peak demand charges. Accessing this data empowers property owners to modify energy management behavior and avoid peak demand events to save money. Smart interval meter data enables building managers to leverage the value of other energy-efficiency devices such as wireless sensors and thermostats. This interface with smart apps, mobile devices, and wireless building management systems facilitates the monitoring of energy use at the building, unit, or equipment level.
- Smart metering enables customers to participate in a utility’s demand-response program. A number of utilities, particularly those in large markets, are willing to pay customers for their assistance in lowering energy demands upon request. Many utilities pay cash or give customers a credit per kWh saved. Every dollar saved in operating expenses adds one dollar to your net operating income — which has a multiplying effect on your building’s value.
- Smart meters can also enhance energy efficiency, lower peak demand, identify equipment and mechanical stress, and provide guidance to schedule energy operations and modify energy consumption in a building.
Smart meters are just one component of a complete energy plan for your commercial multifamily building. Through ETS’s Fast Trak energy management program, our energy efficiency experts will guide you through all your options. Fast Trak will empower you to
- determine your real energy signature and cost of energy,
- better manage your building’s energy usage by using smart apps and mobile dashboards,
- reduce your energy costs by using concierge energy desk support,
- comply with federal, state, and local energy regulations, and
- ultimately improve your building’s value and your bottom line.
By installing smart meters, and with help from a competent, certified energy technology services provider, you’ll not only position your building for energy savings, but you’ll also take the first step in implementing a comprehensive energy management plan for your commercial multifamily building.
[cta]How much money could you save by implementing energy efficiency technologies in your building? Contact ETS to learn more and schedule an energy-savings evaluation.[/cta]
