Harness the Power of Energy Data to Achieve Maximum Cost Savings

No matter the sector, energy systems play a critical role in Commercial & Industrial (C&I) operations, and maintaining efficient and cost-effective systems remains a top priority for every C&I plant manager. However, as companies convert from mechanical to electrical-power processes and deploy onsite distributed energy resources (DERs), this transition will result in larger energy loads and more complex power systems.

 

Set against current objectives to navigate time-of-use (TOU) pricing, peak demand scheduling, and the growing risks to aging power systems, these collective challenges will significantly impede plant managers’ ability to reduce costs.

 

Heila iQ equips C&I plant managers with the sophisticated system monitoring, advanced analytics, and actionable insights they need to harness the untapped power of energy data and make more informed investment decisions to unlock maximum energy cost savings.

 

Lack of High-Precision Energy Data

 

Each facility and each fleet faces its own unique set of hurdles, but several common themes arise across sectors and geographies: A need for high-precision energy data.

 

Without this vital information, C&I plant managers will be unable to

1. Shift operational schedules to adjust to varying TOU pricing
2. Enact rapid demand responses to utility commands or changing energy market conditions
3. Manage average hourly demand to avoid peak demand charges
4. Improve power quality to limit electrical surges, equipment failure, and safety risks
5. Quantify outage incidents and lengths to assess downtime
6. Decide which power system investments will produce the best return on investment (ROI)

 

The inability to effectively monitor and untangle these complex knots all lead to the same destination: inefficient power systems, increased energy costs, and lost revenue.

 

While basic monitoring devices might seem like a good idea, these typically lack the high-precision readings, tracked in hourly or shorter intervals, necessary to pinpoint where, when, and how to improve critical energy loads.

 

Gaining more granular energy data will be crucial to identifying ways to deal with TOU pricing, enable rapid demand response, minimize peak demand charges, and improve power system quality.

 

Where to Go Next With That Energy Data?

 

Collecting more precise energy data is only the first step in achieving maximum cost savings.

 

While installing energy monitoring devices provides more data, many C&I operations lack the resources to translate this highly complex technical information into actionable proposals or usable business cases.

 

For example, peak demand charges are one of the main drivers of demand charges and budget overruns. Peak energy demand pricing is based on a facility’s peak demand during a specific period of time and can result in larger energy bills if peak demand is high. Lowering this could significantly reduce C&I customers’ bills.

 

Since peak demand represents the maximum amount of energy a facility requires in a given interval, effectively managing demand response time and TOU pricing stand out as two ways to reduce peak demand. Accomplishing this would require shifting energy usage to off-peak times when the rates are lower or reducing the use of non-essential equipment in response to a signal from an energy marketer or a utility.

 

Looking at it from a different angle, a facility can respond to a demand signal by utilizing onsite DERs, such as solar arrays or battery storage. But without the proper control and optimization platform, deploying DERs can create more significant problems with the utility grid interconnection, such as harmonic distortion or voltage imbalance.

 

From yet another perspective, determining whether a fleet needs to adjust its energy purchasing strategy to take advantage of lower energy prices requires not just energy monitoring devices at all facilities but the ability to aggregate and analyze fleetwide data.

 

And the faster a facility or fleet can enact these changes, the more potential for cost savings.

 

Each of these scenarios underscores the fact that C&I plant managers need access to more high-precision energy data, better analysis of that data, and a non-technical translation of just what that data says and how to put it to use.

 

Unfortunately, plant managers have traditionally had limited resources and insights to fine-tune energy usage and operational schedules to such a degree that it registers actual results. And without high-precision, long-term energy monitoring, advanced analysis, and data-driven recommendations, those cost savings won’t materialize.

 

Heila iQ Empowers Energy Data to Unlock Savings

 

The data is there — now it’s time to gather it and put it to work using Heila iQ.

 

Using high-precision monitoring and sophisticated software, the Heila iQ platform provides C&I plant managers with monthly and regular summary reports containing detailed metrics, analytics, visualizations, and data-driven insights for a site or fleet-level capital expense investment.

 

Depending on user-specified needs, an iQ customer may want to focus on strategies for reducing fleetwide energy consumption during peak times, such as shifting energy-intensive tasks to when electricity prices are lower.

 

Or they might want to leverage data analytics for predictive maintenance on critical power systems and equipment to prevent costly outages due to system failures or overloads.

 

Or they might want to drill down on outage times, counts, and more granular energy usage data to accurately size and model a potential onsite microgrid for dealing with unplanned downtime.

 

The Heila iQ solution helps in these scenarios and many more.

 

Here’s how Heila iQ’s data flow works:

1. 1. High-precision meter sends measurements to Heila EDGEⓇ
   2. The EDGE platform processes and sends data to the Heila Cloud
   3. The facility’s electrical data is enhanced by external data on weather, tariffs, and market prices
   4. Enhanced facility data is formatted into monthly iQ report
   5. The report is sent to iQ customer

 

Want to learn more about how Heila iQ enables C&I plant managers to harness the power of energy data and achieve maximum cost savings? Contact us today.