The Superhero Secret to Achieving Corporate Energy Reduction Goals
Corporate are increasingly looking at their employees to be superheroes in the good fight against energy waste. This year 57% of corporations have formal energy reduction initiatives, up from 46% last year. That’s a lot of corporations, and a lot of energy waste to conquer!
Corporate energy reduction initiatives often come in the form of year-over-year savings, or 5 to 10 year benchmarked goals. But the irony is that the best facilities managers, chief engineers, and sustainability mangers have been informally tackling the low hanging fruit energy projects for many years. How do energy superheroes find all the ways to meet corporate energy goals?
Like all good secrets this one has been hiding in plain sight….
Accounting.
No, I don’t mean P&L statements or annual budgets. I mean advanced energy metering to track and budget energy use with broad enough categories to spot general trends, and enough granularity to identify and conquer specific the “bad guy” energy waste in buildings.
When was the last time you heard of somebody dramatically reducing their expenses without looking at their checking and credit card accounts? Or somebody seriously reducing their waistline without looking at nutrition labels or counting calories?
Sure, it’s possible, *but it makes the job a lot harder than it needs to be!*
Managing energy is just like managing calories or money: you have to know where it’s going to know where to cut back. And the heroes in energy reduction are using energy data “accounting” like their own personal cape.
General Trends
Some say that there are optimal ratios for consuming carbohydrates vs. proteins to lose weight. In building terms, it’s crucial to look at end use categories to make sure HVAC, lighting, plug load, and other end-use totals are in the appropriate ranges for a building of a given size and use type. Out-of whack numbers can indicate an unhealthy building with energy waste to root out.
What is the ideal way to track end-use data? Sure, there are expensive annual audits, but a year is too long to wait when every month counts. The best energy superheroes are using real-time data to track the categorical usage in their buildings over time. This allows energy superheroes to spot and fix trends before they raise a red flag on a monthly bill or quarterly report.
Granular Insights
This one is a no-brainer: to identify specific energy issues in a facility, you need to have a consistent pulse on its energy consumption, down to individual devices. Whole-building data from smart meters is not sufficient to know whether it’s Pump1 or Pump5, or not even your HVAC at all that’s triggering energy use spikes!
The heroes of corporate sustainability are employing high-resolution, granular metering techniques to easily track individual equipment for alerts about spiking, overheating, or usage during “off hours.” With increasing size and complexity it becomes more and more difficult to know the expected kWh, schedule, and optimal energy draw of every piece of equipment, and energy monitoring clears up that mystery.
About Verdigris
At Verdigris, we believe energy monitoring is the Superhero’s cape you might have been looking for to achieve your corporate energy reduction initiative.
We are experts in empowering facilities managers with key electricity use metrics — from whole building main monitoring, down to individual device alerts and reporting. We empower facilities managers and chief engineers keep tight accounting on building energy use to achieve corporate sustainability goals.