Energy is undoubtedly crucial in today’s world, with electricity powering practically everything we rely on and use on a daily basis. While a power outage may be considered a minor and occasional nuisance in residential settings, in large industrial and commercial facilities like factories, malls, or production plants, problems with power can have a major effect on the business’s operations.
The goal of energy management is to reduce energy wastage while maintaining the quantity and quality of production. Energy management can help optimize and bolster your company’s financials, environmental impact, and facility performance, but energy management is often not a priority for firms as they do not realize the impact it has on their bottom line. However, allocating even just a small portion of your budget to energy management can have a significant impact on increasing your long-term profits. Listed below are three benefits of effective energy management.
Cost reduction
Energy is often one of the largest recurring expenditures associated with facilities and one of the most difficult to reduce without effective management. This in turn makes cost reduction one of the biggest advantages of effectively managing your facility’s energy consumption. Tracking the energy consumption of all your equipment will help you and your staff understand which equipment is the most efficient and identify areas for improvement.
Peak management is another way to reduce energy costs. In Ontario, the IESO Global Adjustment (GA) cost for Class A consumers is calculated based on the consumer’s contribution to the top five peak hours of energy use over a year. Thus, tracking the peaks and curtailing energy use during these hours of high demand will help reduce energy bills. Edgecom Energy’s pTrack™ portal provides accurate peak prediction, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to recommend customers when to curtail. Reducing energy consumption during these hours will reduce your facility’s share of provincial energy use and lower your costs significantly.
Environmental Benefits
Along with reducing costs, managing your energy consumption can also reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases (GHGs) your facility emits into the atmosphere. In North America, the majority of energy is generated in power plants which burn fossil fuels like coal or natural gas, biofuels, or nuclear fuel. Burning fossil fuels leads to the production of GHGs which exacerbate the effects of climate change. Improving the energy efficiency of your home or facility reduces the amount of electricity you need, in turn lowering the demand for electricity from local power plants and reducing the resulting GHG emissions.
Additionally, power produced and consumed during the peak hours is the dirtiest (most emission intense) form of power as plants have to tap into less environmental sources of energy to meet high demand. Thus, reducing your energy consumption during peak hours not only reduces your energy bills, but also reduces your emissions. Our pTrack™ platform also provides GHG emission reporting that makes it easier for our customers to monitor, measure, and report on the impact their operations have on the environment.
Improved performance and productivity
Effective energy management can also improve your facility’s performance and productivity. Energy management systems provide complete control over every aspect of energy consumption, including lighting and temperature controls, to create the most comfortable working environment. It also increases your understanding of how your facility operates by providing important data on your various assets, processes, and machinery. Knowing how much energy each individual asset consumes can help identify inefficiencies quickly and allow your staff to swap out faulty devices before it affects performance.
Reducing energy costs also frees up significant portions of your budget that can now be used in other areas of your business such as marketing, sales, or employee salaries. This new capital can also be re-invested into improving your business operations or making the facility more efficient, both of which will have long-term benefits. Our battery powered Internet of Things (IoT) metering solution provides access to all your facility’s consumption data in real-time. IoT ensures reliable, real-time data transfer for any physical devices you want to monitor and control, giving you a deeper insight into how your facility operates.
Capitalizing on effective energy management can also have positive impacts on other areas of your business, including brand image and employee satisfaction. These lead to increased talent attraction and retention rates as well as improving your company’s standing in the eyes of potential customers and investors.
There are many energy management systems that make it easier for industrial, commercial, and residential facilities to manage their energy consumption without requiring extensive knowledge of energy management. Edgecom Energy has many products and services aimed at helping customers understand, improve and control their energy consumption effectively – making it easy for all facilities to improve the return on their business.
To learn more about pTrack™, IoT, and other offerings from Edgecom Energy, check out our resources or contact us to get a demo.
