Start to investigate your kW demand profile for understanding what’s driving your energy use

Posted on by Anthony Schoofs

Reducing energy costs starts by understanding what’s driving your energy use.

Your organisation is typically billed for its hourly consumption patterns and peak demand for energy, so monitoring both your consumption (kWh) and demand (kW) is vital in reducing energy costs.

You may be familiar with monitoring your kWh consumption in the Breakdown tab of our Wattics dashboard and through your electricity bills, but it’s now time to get started with the analysis of your kW load demand data and much more in the Raw Data tab of our Wattics dashboard.

Try out Raw Data analysis now
 

Load demand variations over a 7-day period
 

Don’t be scared by what you see, what you are looking for is very specific:

  • Peak demand (max kW value over period and what time it occurred), to find out if you are being overcharged with your MIC (Maximum Import Capacity) charges. You need to select the meter that monitors your entire site first.
  • Overnight demand levels, to compare to daily levels and find out if more equipment could be switched off)
  • High consumption hours (when demand starts to increase and decrease), to find out if it matches your business hours
  • Down-time periods (e.g. lunch time breaks, week-ends), to find out if your staff operates equipment efficiently
  • Unusual demand peaks (e.g. peak at night or drop during the day), to find out if electrical have been left on or has failed

 

Examples of what you can discover from the analysis of your load demand variations.
 

Sometimes a daily kWh figure does not reflect what’s happening during the day. Now that you know how to identify what’s really happening (and what shouldn’t), you can:

  • Go back to your staff and call for action (awareness campaign to switch off equipment when not in use during breaks, over night and at weekends)
  • Go back to your supplier or energy consultant and ask them to revisit the MIC (Maximum Import Capacity) you are registered for to reduce your electricity bills
  • Set up alerts in your dashboard (static alerts or Sentinel alerts) to be notified when abnormal demand is detected
  • Revisit your BMS and timer settings throughout your site to align them with business hours and space occupancy (major potential savings on HVAC and Lighting)

If you need to forward your findings to colleagues or management, you can export all the graphs by clicking on the Export icon at the top right of the graph and select an export to image, PDF or CSV file.

Try out Raw Data analysis now
 

Of course, we are always there should you need clarifications on how to use your energy management dashboard, so please feel free to get in touch with us at any time.

Wattics is a cloud-based Energy Management platform that can be presented to your customers as your own solution for energy monitoring, auditing, analysis and verification. Check out the capabilities of the Wattics dashboard to see if it is a fit for your project! Book a demo now by simply filling out the form below (this will only take 2 minutes of your time):

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Anthony Schoofs

Chief Technical Officer at Wattics
Anthony drives Wattics' innovation on energy efficiency for industrial and grid environments. Anthony is also behind WSNbuzz.com, a blog covering technology advances within the smart grid and IoT markets, and was listed in 2011 amongst the top 100 IoT thinkers. Anthony was recently awarded the Globe Sustainability Research Award for his contribution to advancing knowledge on sustainability.

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