E-Mon Submeters Save Energy and Cut Cost—Across the Facility Landscape

The type of energy data needed by today's sophisticated facility is beyond the capability of the master utility meter, which provides a broad indication of consumption (kWh) and demand (kW), but not the level of load profiling needed for:

• Allocating energy cost to specific lease spaces, circuits or buildings;
• Profiling entire facility for demand management, load shedding and energy initiative compliance;
• Aggregating energy demand/use for bulk energy contracts in deregulated markets;
• Deploying demand response/control to avoid costly ratchet charges;
• Implementing Cost allocation; tenant billing, equipment performance diagnostics and more.

As first-level data gathering tools in the facility load-profiling process, submeters provide high-accuracy 15- or 30-minute snapshots of energy use and demand—from the enterprise level all the way down to a specific circuit or item of equipment. Submeters are an easily installed, versatile and scalable solution for obtaining the degree of energy intelligence needed to optimize today's facility operations—no matter what type of facility needs monitoring. Following are just a few examples out of thousands, of how submeters are being used in real-world scenarios to save energy, cut cost and improve the facility bottom line.

Commercial

About half of the 52-story Bank of America building in San Francisco was submetered after energy managers learned that tenants' 3kW/sq. ft. energy allowance was being exceeded by as much as 300 percent. After more than 120 submeters were installed, the property owner recovered about $1M in excess energy costs in the first year alone. The property manager said that the cost of the submetering hardware and software resulted in an ROI of days, not years, complemented by energy usage and cost savings of 30% per year. As a result of this experience, the property management company, one of the nation's largest, is installing submeters in other commercial properties around the country.

Industrial

One of two co-located manufacturing divisions of a New Hampshire valve foundry was experiencing unusually high energy costs compared to other corporate facilities that made the same product with similar equipment. As a result, the corporate office decided to shut down the division and move the manufacturing operation to an area of the country with lower electrical tariffs. In an attempt to solve the problem without having to relocate the business, managers installed E-Mon submeters to isolate the energy usage of the two divisions and to measure usage of specific equipment and processes.

They found that the division paying for 60 percent of the electric bill was actually using less than 41 percent of the complex's total energy. The submeters also showed that a heat-treating process used once a week was causing a 175 kW spike in energy usage. By moving its heat-treating process to a day when overall demand was lower, in addition to other measures, submeters were credited with saving the division $2,100 per month just by eliminating this spike in electricity. Energy allocation was reduced by $324,000 per year and closure plans were cancelled.

E-Mon's Green Class submeters provide a scrolling LCD display of CO2 emissions, kWh and other sophisticated energy measurements that can help users gain green facility certification points under the LEED rating system.

Multi-Family

Pressured by rising overhead, Park Plaza Condominiums in Pittsburgh, PA, was faced with either raising monthly maintenance fees or finding a way to recover electrical costs that were not being passed through to the resident owners and commercial businesses on site. Running additional power company metering to each of the building's more than 120 commercial and residential spaces would have been prohibitively expensive, so the decision was made to submeter the property's electrical usage (kWh).

The system's $113,000 installed cost paid for itself in only seven months—returning $16,000 per month in electrical costs that were recovered as a direct result of submetering. Holding the residents accountable for their actual usage resulted in increased energy awareness and higher conservation levels. The property manager is very happy with the system, and how the E-Mon Energy software collects the data and produces monthly billing statements.

Educational

Rockhurst University in Kansas City, MO, recently expanded its building automation system to include electric submeters as part of a new facility-wide energy initiative. To date, the lead electrician has installed 15 E-Mon D-Mon Class 3000 submeters to determine the dollar-per-square-foot cost of various campus buildings and to identify energy "hot spots" that could be turned into energy savings. Submetering revealed a 9-10% voltage drop at the building farthest from the transformer, indicating the need for a utility upgrade. In another building, the typical $1.25-$1.50 sq ft baseline turned out to be almost $2.70, revealing an over-worked HVAC unit whose compressors were all firing at once, causing a major spike that was caught by the building's electric submeter.

Government / Institutional

The lead energy management group technician estimated that the Smithsonian's eleven facilities in the Capitol Mall were able to bill back $1.7M of their annual energy costs to lease tenants that otherwise would have been paid with Federal tax dollars. He estimated that figure at $2M for the following year due to rising utility rates and the opening of a new facility. According to the technician, the $100K investment in submetering hardware and software paid for itself only three months after the first quarterly utility billing cycle was completed.

The Bottom Line is the Bottom Line

Submeters are an inexpensive and easily installed solution for that old energy adage that says, "You can't manage what you don't measure." Since they may be installed virtually anywhere, submeters are ideal for monitoring individual items of equipment or circuits of interest. However data collection is only the beginning.

Until the raw data is imported into automatic meter reading (AMR) software and manipulated for cost allocation, billing, load shedding, rate negotiations and a host of other uses, it has limited practical value. E-Mon's full line of submetering hardware and software systems are designed to acquire, analyze and convert even the most sophisticated energy profile data into information you can use to cut costs, use precious energy resources more efficiently and improve your facility's bottom line—no matter what kind of facility you're operating.