Making Sense of Electrical Metering Data

One of the greatest challenges facing companies today is organizing and making sense of vast amounts of collected electrical metering data. This task would be difficult enough if the data was all consistent and in a single data base, but for most companies this is not the case. For most companies, the data sits in a variety of meters, in different locations around the state or across the country with bits and pieces in a database somewhere and perhaps even some with 3rd party consultants or utility companies. Perhaps a number of reports are prepared by others and presented to the Company at regular scheduled intervals long after the electricity has been used.

The ideal Energy information scenario for today’s companies would be to have each electrical meter interconnected over the company WAN so that information can be retrieved from the meters and centralized in a single data base. From there the data could be distributed on demand to the people in the company that need the information, either on a historical (review) basis or on a real time (minute by minute basis).
Imagine having access to electrical usage information from any of your Utility Meters on any computer over your Wide Area Network. Not only could you view historical consumption data, but also real time (minute by minute) electrical loads for individual meters or groups of meters by facility, geographical location or corporate wide. With access to this information, your ability to manage electricity usage and identify waste would be extremely effective.

Many companies have opportunities to achieve savings and reduce electricity waste by taking an active roll in how electricity is used in the facility. The first step in actively managing the electricity usage is to create a strategy for curtailing electrical load when it is beneficial to do so. The curtailment strategy must be unobtrusive to the manufacturing process and be worthwhile in terms of economic benefits to the company. Although this sounds difficult to achieve, it has been our experience that companies can quickly identify significant loads which can be curtailed when necessary. It sometimes proves more difficult to get employees to embrace the strategy as resistance to change can sometimes be an issue when internally “selling” the concept of automatic load control. It if for this reason that upper management must drive the deployment of the strategies and educate employees regarding all the economic and environmental benefits that managing the use of electricity will bring to the company.

It has been our experience that curtailment of electrical load must be fully automatic. Over the years, some companies have attempted to curtail load by turning on various lights, buzzers and even pagers. This is not a reliable way to curtail electrical load because the failure to curtail just once can have a detrimental effect on the goal of saving money or reducing waste. This is especially true if the curtailment is to avoid setting excessive peak demand.

Most utilities calculate peak demand on a monthly or annual one time occurrence basis, for example if your utility calculates peak kW based on the highest reading in any 15 minute or 30 minute time period throughout the month, failing to curtail during any single time period when your electrical load is high would set a new peak. By automatically curtailing the electrical load this risk is avoided.

Historically, companies had load curtailment strategies on a facility by facility basis. Today there are more opportunities to aggregate loads by facility, region or on a corporate basis. The ability to aggregate can be beneficial from a load curtailment point of view as it allows for a strategy which can be spread across a greater number of electrical loads and allows for flexibility in the scheduling of various equipment that can be curtailed, this will lesson the potential for an detrimental effect to production. For example, a company that aggregated 6 facilities with a load curtailment target of 2 megawatts could control a smaller number loads in each facility to achieve the total reduction at any given time.

Being able to quantify the savings is also important. By centralizing the data and allowing access to it by any authorized users across the corporate WAN, user friendly reports can be generated for individual meters, aggregated loads and on a corporate basis. Many companies have found it beneficial to also gather information from sub-meters in order to facilitate the allocation of electricity costs by department or “cost center” within the facilities.

Although the deployment of such an energy management solution would seem very expensive and complicated, for LCA it is actually quite straight forward and affordable. With over 30 years of experience in deploying proven solutions we can assure you that our experience and expertise is second to none and we look forward to the opportunity to discuss your energy management goals.