Do you know how much your demand charges are, how to reduce them, or even *what* demand charges are?
Utility companies dis-incentivize energy usage during high demand times to avoid grid-wide brownouts and blackouts. This often means facilities are charged more for energy during the hottest days of the summer months, when air conditioning usage leads to heavy loads.
Enrolling in a demand-response program or demand-based Time of Use billing may save money on your electricity bill in 3 ways:
- Reduce spend during the most expensive times of year
- Bring down energy (kWh) costs for the rest of the year
- Earn rebates for promised or committed kWh reductions
Here’s the rub: although demand response programs promise big savings, facilities can’t effectively participate without transparency into which devices are consuming the most energy (and when!).
If management asked you to drop 25, 50, or 100 kW this afternoon, would you know what to do? Do you think you could do it?
For many, the answer is “no” or “it doesn’t seem possible.”
How can you make smart decisions about which loads to shed (turn off completely) and shift (turn on/off at different times) without knowing how much energy is being consumed? Lack of data can mean money left on the table.
To tackle this challenge, chief engineers and facilities managers are looking at energy data from branch circuit monitors to understand exactly which equipment are consuming the most, when they are consuming it, and what they can turn off safely.
By applying machine learning to historical usage patterns — and combining this with weather and other datasets — services like Verdigris tell users when they are likely to use more, prompting pre-cooling, shutoffs, and start up changes that can save huge amounts of money on the most expensive energy days of the year!
To learn more about how Verdigris is helping facilities managers and chief engineers manage their energy demand, check out our white paper!
