Cut Utility Costs with Data-Driven Energy Management

You can lower your electric bills by reducing your building’s energy usage, but do you have any control over the rates your utility charges you? If you use a data-driven energy management strategy, the answer is yes.

Understand your energy costs

Utility bill charges aren’t just for the actual amounts of energy that your multifamily or commercial building uses in a given month. Utility bills include both consumption charges and demand charges. On electric bills, consumption refers to the total amount of energy used in that billing cycle and is measured in kilowatt-hours (kwh). Demand refers to the highest average amount of energy (i.e., capacity) required during that billing cycle, and is measured in kilowatts (kW).

Reducing consumption charges is a relatively straightforward matter of taking actions to use less electricity. For example, with conventional strategies, you can switch to energy-efficient lighting, purchase energy-efficient appliances, or add more insulation to a building. Furthermore, in today’s digital wireless age, building owners can empower themselves to reduce energy consumption by utilizing smart thermostats and load control devices enhanced with wireless sensors and mobile applications.

However, for buildings that are not equipped with utility interval meters, the rate charged for the building’s consumption is pre-determined by a one-size-fits-all rate class load profile. The utility “assumes” a set hourly profile of usage that does not reflect the building’s actual consumption pattern. Within the non-interval meter billing construct, property owners are not compensated for shifting their loads to take advantage of off-peak rates. Unless the property can be billed on actual interval meter usage data, the building will be charged according to an estimated usage curve. Smart interval meters provide the data to empower building management to pay for what they actually use, when they actually use it.

In addition to cutting consumption costs and benefitting from off peak rates, smart interval meters can reduce peak demand charges as well. Demand charges are set by the highest peak demand event during the billing cycle. Non-interval billed accounts must accept a once a month, after the fact demand meter read. Smart interval meters can calibrate the exact time that the utility can assess the peak demand charge. The interval meter data produces an actual transparent demand profile that enables property managers to understand their real demand patterns and take action to mitigate peak demand costs.  The charges can be further shaved down by harnessing energy technologies guided by data-driven interval data.

The power to save with data-driven energy management

A data-driven energy management strategy uses data from a variety of smart devices to enable load management, demand response, and energy storage — all of which can reduce your building’s capacity requirements (based on the facility’s peak demand history), which, in turn, lowers your demand charges. The data comes from:

• Smart meters
• Smart load controls and sensors (such as wireless HVAC load controls, diagnostic sensors, and thermostats)
• Smart apps and dashboards

[sidebar]Data-Driven Energy Management for CHP Devices
Combined heat and power (CHP) devices are emerging as a viable energy-reduction solution for commercial and multifamily building owners.

A CHP device is an off-grid power resource that uses natural gas to generate power onsite. Its operation also produces waste heat that a building can use for domestic hot water and base building heating. For example, this summer in Manhattan, a 40-story multifamily building’s CHP unit produced all the hot water for the building’s residents.

You can use interval data from smart meters to determine the optimum-size CHP device your building requires.[/sidebar]

The smart meters and other devices calibrate your building’s energy usage (both consumption and demand) at 15-minute intervals, 24 hours a day. That provides more than 35,000 data points per year. You can analyze this data to produce reports that provide detailed insights into your building’s energy usage. For example, this data can reveal:

• Peak demand — You can find out your building’s capacity requirements and when peak demand is most likely to occur, so that you can take action to shave demand by implementing technologies for this purpose, such as battery storage and microgrid solutions.
• Performance metrics — You can learn about your building’s overall energy signature and areas for improvement. The performance data indicates the efficiency of your mechanical systems (e.g., HVAC, water) and provides fault detection and diagnostics (e.g., water leaks, condensation from cooling systems).
• Actual electricity usage — The interval data from the smart meters shows your building’s actual electricity usage, not the estimated usage based on the utility’s predetermined load profile for the facility.

Reduce your energy demand costs

By analyzing the data captured by the smart devices, you can verify what your actual peak demand is, verify what your capacity requirements are, and calibrate your true signature of energy usage. With several months of such data in hand, you can show the utility that your building’s capacity requirements are actually lower than what the utility has established, enabling you to get a lower demand rate and reduce your overall cost of electricity service.

Reducing capacity/peak demand will lower the charges on the demand portion of your building’s utility bill and could even qualify your facility for a lower demand rate schedule (which reduces your per-kW energy costs).

ETS provides the devices, apps, and expertise to help building owners and operations management reduce energy demand costs. In addition, as a licensed energy supplier in New York State, ETS has even more power to reduce energy rates as well as consumption and demand for your facility.

Employing a data-driven energy management strategy, with expert help from ETS, empowers building owners by giving them the knowledge and tools they need to make intelligent decisions about energy usage and employ practices that will cut costs and make their buildings more sustainable.

[cta]Want to make your building energy efficient but don’t know where to start? ETS can help! Contact us to learn more and request a feasibility study.[/cta]