Learn Five Ways Meters Mean Money for You
Credit to Author: Joy Silber| Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2017 15:03:40 +0000
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One easy way to check items off your ever-growing facility management to-do list is with power and energy meters. Power and energy meters pull in information, isolate areas of waste, reduce costs, and track performance. They also can help meet sustainability goals and mandates. Plus, they are connected, customizable, easy-to-read and manage, and turnkey ready.
From simple to advanced capabilities, from an add-on to embedded meters or even entire systems, there is a wide range of meter options available. But whether you need meters for a data center or a hospital, the benefits of adding even one meter shouldn’t be ignored.
How old is your electrical system? How healthy is your electrical system? It may be time for an update. Intelligent meters improve your electrical system health and empower your system with actionable data. But most of all, they can help you save money.
Let’s look at five ways meters mean money for you.
1. Improved Energy Efficiency:
Gain operational efficiency through better energy performance — as simple as 2+2=4.
But it might not always be that simple to know your company’s energy usage and performance. 24% of companies thought they did not have an “accurate overview of how much energy is consumed and why.” (Edison Energy ‘The New Energy Future’ white paper copyright 2016)
Intelligent meters rapidly achieve that knowledge and improve energy proficiency. Meters track actual energy usage as compared to projected consumption. Meters quickly identify when more energy is being used than expected. You even can understand energy usage down to the load. They analyze capacity and help reduce peak demand. An energy efficiency program utilizing intelligent meters can save up to 30% of a building’s energy needs.
2. Asset Management:
Every competent manager seeks to optimize equipment and save the capital outlay needed for new assets. An intelligent meter partners with you to achieve this goal.
Picture a tube of toothpaste. You waste half of the paste if you don’t squeeze from the bottom. That’s asset management. Only instead of saving $1, multiply that by the tens of thousands when you choose asset management with an intelligent meter. In terms of a facility, the “toothpaste” is your electrical distribution equipment and the connected loads.
Intelligent meters improve current equipment by showing problems and solutions to keep production humming smoothly. You extend your equipment life span and reduce costs.
They ensure the energy is safe, reliable, efficient, productive, and sustainable.
3. Power Quality Monitoring:
Downtime means loss. Sometimes downtime precipitates significant loss. It can cause a financial hit, a productivity crisis, and in the case of a hospital, threats to people’s lives. Saving your system from power quality issues, including sags/swell, harmonics, transients, or flicker is vital, and when these disruptions cause downtime, crucial.
Up to 40% of industry segment outages are caused by power quality disturbances. (European Copper Institute 2012)
Identifying and mitigating power quality issues provides faster ROI from your system. Meters can provide data on power quality, identify issues such as voltage sags, and even locate the directional source of an issue… With power quality data from a meter, you can then isolate the source, fix it, and reduce risk. Since some electrical companies charge penalties for poor power quality, it’s one more way to save money.
4. Cost Allocation and Billing:
A capable energy management system features cost allocation and billing features, ideal where a building owner must charge back tenants or departments.
Meters give building managers a customizable tenant bill program that can create detailed bills for tenants. For cost allocation, meters deliver interconnected data. Departments process vendors’ costs and utilize an aggregated view of allocations across suppliers.
Companies also can collect billing data, discover billing errors, and get money back from their utility. 79% of companies suffer overcharges on utility bills. (The Department of National Utilities Refund)
5. Improved Power Availability and Reliability
A power and energy meter can monitor your sensitive power equipment and your entire electrical infrastructure. By using a meter to monitor equipment and even backup power systems, you can ensure you always have power when you need it. Tracking performance of your system and equipment can help you avoid malfunctions, power spikes, and shutdowns, improving reliability. Plus, you can improve facility uptime, optimize your electrical network and maximize power usage. Increasing your facility reliability and efficiently using power means dollars saved and a healthier bottom line.
Intelligent meters provide programmable control and intelligent management, meeting the needs for simplicity, connectivity, flexibility, productivity, and efficiency.
Meters mean results versus risks. Meters mean money saved.
To learn more about how to improve power and energy management visit www.schneider-electric.us/powerandenergy
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