Why should businesses track their energy usage?
It's now more important than ever for businesses to have clear and detailed figures of their energy usage. Whether it's part of Net Zero and Sustainability goals, determining the energy performance of the building, or just keeping operational costs down during yet another energy crisis, companies of all sizes need to track how much energy they're using and where they are using it. How else can you know if you've achieved your goal?
What does Energy Monitoring mean?
Energy Monitoring means tracking the amount of energy that has been used in a defined period, usually per week or month. This could be done by checking the incoming energy taken from the National Grid or on-site generation methods like solar photovoltaics. It could also mean tracking what each appliance or system uses within a premises. You can then refer to this data in the future. Sometimes this can even include water usage, and may include energy control, heating, and cooling metrics.
With the HeatingSave energy monitoring module, you can easily monitor and analyse energy usage and environmental impact through user-friendly graphics and real-time data. The HeatingSave app means you can do this from anywhere with an internet connection.
Get an Energy Audit to see what energy is used where
When making energy decisions, you need to know more than just what energy is drawn into and used by your site or building. You need to check what the energy is being used for and what outcomes you are getting. This way you can decide how important a tool or process is.
An energy audit will assess every part of your building and systems and how much energy they use. It includes how well insulated buildings and rooms are, how efficient heating and heat reclamation systems are, and how much is used by appliances.
Energy awareness
Another, less tangible, benefit to monitoring your energy usage, is that it makes you — and your employees! — more aware of the energy being used. For example, just how much that extra cup of coffee costs, or how much money it would save to switch off one of the extra heaters and bring the temperature down from sub-tropical in the office. In this way people might think twice before switching on a device they don't need, or checking they've turned off their computer at the end of the day to cut the amount of wasted energy.
For business use, however, knowing the amount of energy used — even down to the room, employee or device — can help to provide a budget guide, and make it easier to ensure energy bills are what you expect.
Actionable data, not just numbers without context
By monitoring your energy data, you can learn exactly where you can make savings or improvements to your existing setup. Some Building Energy Management Systems can learn this information themselves; HeatingSave can create a Heat Loss Algorithm, which understands the way that your rooms and buildings heat and cool. This actionable data can be fed into heating and cooling systems, allowing them to be optimised and perform more efficiently.
You may also be able to identify other ways that you are being inefficient with your energy. For example, a room that is not staying adequately warm could need upgraded insulation, or an aging appliance may be using considerably more power than others of the same type, which may indicate it needs replacing.
Verifiable Savings
As you make changes and improvements from the data, you will soon be able to see these changes reflected in the figures. This is especially true if you have a system like HeatingSave which has visualisation and graphical tools to see changes at a granular level. You can use this data even after you've made changes for continuous monitoring. Some of our customers have even been able to triage issues they were not even aware of and fix them.
HeatingSave is the energy monitoring solution
The HeatingSave Building Energy Management System is designed to reduce utility costs by upgrading heat control, slashing excess usage, and optimising performance across systems. Accurately monitoring energy usage is a substantial part of this process, and not only can HeatingSave provide reports and analytics on day-to-day (or minute by minute) energy usage, you can see in real-time where and how much energy is being used. With these live updates on energy consumption, you can also see how much it is costing — and make adjustments as necessary. You can also receive alerts if energy use changes or increases unexpectedly, or if a piece of heating equipment malfunctions.
All of this can be viewed and managed via the HeatingSave software on a desktop computer, or on the HeatingSave app wherever you can connect to the internet — ensuring you will always be able to keep your energy monitoring and use handy.
Talk to one of our team today to discuss why you need to improve your energy monitoring and energy use — and see much energy and money you could save.