February 10th, 2010

One of the great red herrings in Energy Efficiency is that more meters provide more information. More meters will obviously provide more data, but if the data adds little to your current activities then the expenditure is unnecessary.

GAIA often meet businesses who have understandably fallen into this trap. They proudly show us their Energy Monitoring System but when questioned can’t really interpret what it is saying or more importantly make sensible actions from it.

It seems anyone can easily fall into a ‘data overload’ whereby you can see everything but action little.

Here’s our 5 top tips on Sub Metering.

• If legislation requires you to have sub metering or even smart metering consider first what is necessary to comply first.
• With legal compliance out of the way then consider for each site or area what is the ‘variable’ energy consumption is each area. Variable energy is consumption you can have influence over managing. Then rank each site by this criteria. Consider both the machinery and human matters when ranking these.
• Think actions not data. e.g: What can this tell me if I meter it?  You don’t want a new job analysing data feeds that will not help you make change.
• Remember the key route to sustainable Energy Saving is staff behaviour and education. Will your sub metering data help you do this?
• Clarify and Re-Clarify  your Goal at the start with your Senior Colleagues. Are you doing this to save money,  meet legislative requirements, help the business expand or demonstrate a competitive edge over competitors. Which ever you choose will have a significant impact on the investment you undertake and will avoid time wasting.

GAIA February 2010

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 11:17 am and is filed under Energy Saving Tips, GAIA, Smart Metering and Monitoring . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.