Is your facility on Time of Use billing?
If you don’t know the answer to that question, there’s a large chance you have thousands of dollars to save by digging deeper.
New digital smart meters collect electricity consumption data at regular intervals (typically every 15 or 30 minutes). This evolution in metering led to complex, time-based electricity billing plans that charge MUCH more for energy at certain times of day.
Rate schedules vary between utility company and customer, but common TOU plans may:
* Charge the most per kWh for peak times of day for the entire utility territory, usually between 12pm-8pm
* Charge a middle tier rate for usage during semi-peak times
* Charge an exorbitant rate per averaged kW during the single highest usage interval during a billing cycle (peak demand)
Many facilities don’t realize that they are on this kind of billing plan, and even when they do, do not feel EMPOWERED to make changes in their facility to reduce their bill. Energy data is changing that. Also called “demand management,” by looking deeply at the loads your facility uses over the course of any given day, you’ll have the ability to save money by shifting and shedding sufficient loads — and dollars.
To game TOU billing and recover hidden savings, continuous energy monitoring services alert users in real-time to:
* Threshold crossings, such as approaching the single highest point in the month to not exceed it
* Energy spend and changes in billing on a daily and monthly basis
* Instantaneous recommendations of loads to shed or shift in anticipation of expensive times (predictive demand management)
* Patterns of usage over longer periods of time to identify systematic changes to reduce usage during the most expensive times (to participate in Automated Demand Response or to create a behavioral strategy)
These features allow users to make smart choices about when to use energy and when it might be more cost effective to shut off or wait to use. If you don’t know where your energy is going, it’s very hard (if not impossible!) to decide what is safe to turn off or on, or even measure whether your change was effective. Using energy data is empowering facilities to game their electricity bills and stop wasting money. Demand management around time-of-use billing suddenly becomes possible with the right data and analytics!
Want to learn more about saving money on your energy bill? Download our white paper “15 Ways to Run your Facility Better with Energy Data”.15 Ways to Run your Facility Better with Energy Data
