3+ Benefits of Data Monitoring when Fighting High Electricity Consumption
Expensive electricity – a view that has become the reality and the future
All business try to balance customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. And also not to forget the bills for electricity because that could just ruin it all.
Our first article in the series IT Handyman logically goes to where the need is teh greatest – how to utilize technologies to save on electricity.
Let’s loog at three problems that businesses, offices and other commercial spaces solve – bills after the invoice period, information only about the whole environment and quite significant consumption during the night. We will see how specifically the Internet of Things resolves and we will find out why data vizualization is so important.
Electricity Bill Too Late
As soon as invoices contain an electrictiy bill, it is already too late to do something about it. So what should you do to be able to influence it?
One of the options is to turn off all of the appliances, heating, lights,… But then we are already leaving the space of the satisfied employee – cold conditions at a workplace are cruel and eventually it will end up with the employees using different methods (and usually more expensive ones). Besides, you don’t even know if you are truly saving in the right place.
If you utilize data monitoring via the Internet of Things, you gain immense power over your consumption. The reason is simple – you collect data and you collect them in real time. You can with a sense of security figure out which measures influence your consumption and to what extent.
So data are your closest ally because you can react to changes immediately. You just need a small box with a battery connected to mobile data.
Information Only about Sum of the Parts
You bill also doesn’t tell you where you should look for for the biggest glutton – a device or appliance that has the biggest impact on the level of your consumption.
- What will a change of one degree do?
- What if the heating runs in different intervals?
- Is our new equipment truly more efficient that the old one?
- Are labels accurate?
These are just a few of the questions the Internet of Things can answer for you. It is not just about the feeling you collect data. Thanks to them you can paint a clear picture about the equipment and their share on consumption. And based on that you can work with them.
So data management is necessary to keep the balance between consumption and the satisfaction of those currently being present in the shop.
Night Glutton
One would think that during the night the consummption is almost zero. But experience shows that there could be several devices that just keep on eating. They can have a relatively high output even when times when they are not needed. They might not be even required to run. What then?
Thanks to data collection regarding their consumption, you can easily identify the culprits that eat when not needed. That way you get rid of the unnecessary kWs consumed that could annually reach thousands in costs.
Data Are Scary
It is true when there is a lot of them and they are in a plain table. That is why not only data collection but also their visualization are important. For example, the picture below shows a set of data. Which one gives you a better understanding?
The graphs show deviations, non-standard events and long-term trends. All of this information can then be projected into remedies and immediate actions. IoT gives you adaptability that has a good foundation and higzh speed.
Collection, Vizualization and Much More
A monitoring system also has another advantage – you don’t have to really keep an eye on the occurrence of non-standard events. That is what alerting is for. Let’s look at a simple situation from two points of view – electricity outage.
No monitoring – The power goes off during the night. The employees figure it out when they get to work and then the investigation starts.
With monitoring – The power goes off in the middle of the night and responsible persons are notified immediately. Employees can get notified and the situation can be resolved immediately.
The only difference is in the second instance, people received a timely text or email. That is generated automatically when the system detects an unusual event. This could be a sudden change in temperature, to big of a deviation or a system without a response.
Monitoring and data visualization of your consumption provides you with valuable data that are comprehensible and show the current situation and what kind of change happens when you test a new approach or change operations. This information is at your service immediately so there is ot surprise when the bill comes. Besides you can optimize operations to make your company, customers and employees more satisfied. And that applies even when the prices go up.
