Awareness and planning are the key steps in a successful energy savings program. Why is sub-metering important in reducing your energy cost. Many people think the main purpose of sub meters installation to invoice tenants for their energy consumption. It is much much more. In fact billing tenants using sub-metering may not necessarily motivate him to reduce its energy foot print unless we can show him what are the potential savings and where he should focus his attention.
Sub-metering is the first step in understanding your power usage. It provides data which can be analyzed to determine:
a) how much energy each building systems (HVAC, hot water, process equipment, computers, lighting) is using, how is that energy split through out the day, the week or the year. How much energy is used in relation to overall building occupency.
b) comparing each system energy consumption with best in class will help you determine what are the potential savings, what should be the priorities, what target to set and how we will monitor the progress and make adjustments as we go along.
c) Sub-metering data can help you quickly identify when a system is out of tune, when it needs adjustment, maintenance or repair.
EnergyToBill offers to deliver an Energy Saving Program on a cost plus basis, or as a fixed price or as an Energy-metering-as-a-service which eliminates the up-front cost of sub-metering as the equipment remains the property of the supplier and is leased to the building owner on a monthly fee based on the energy saving target
The section “Articles and Links” in the main menu contains many unbiased papers on energy saving program and on the benefit of sub-metering.
Implementing Energy Saving Program
When we implement an Energy Saving Program the following steps are usually followed:
- Detailed survey of the building to estimate the energy consumption of each building system and each tenant.
- Analysis of past energy consumption based on utility bills history and any other energy data available
- Comparison with best in class and assessment of potential energy savings
- Cost estimation of sub-metering and other instrument
- Detailed report is presented to the building owner showing the findings, the potential savings, the return on investment,
- Discussion on Terms and Conditions including the role, involvement and responsibilities sharing between the Owner and EnergyToBill, contract duration, performance monitoring, pros and cons of different contractual structures (cost plus, turnkey, energy-metering-as-a-service)
- Contract signature