Energy Management FAQs
What Is Demand Control?
Demand Control, also called demand management, is the process of understanding where, when and why energy demand spikes occur and taking ongoing, automatic measures to reduce them or shift them with minimal impact on facility operations.
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What Is Demand Response?
Demand response is the concept of end-use customers changing their electric energy usage in response to changes in electricity rates or incentives provided by utility companies. The goal for utility companies is to lower system-wide demand during peak times through controlled loads rather than building additional power generation infrastructure. Demand response, although around for years, is emerging now as utilities’ most promising method of dealing with increased pressure on their supply during high usage times such as summer peak hours. It is less expensive for utilities to create incentives for industrial and commercial users to lower their energy demand during peak times than it is for utilities to produce additional electricity and sell it to those who cannot alter their energy consuming behavior.
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What Is The Energy Director™?
Developed in Sweden in 1994, the Energy Director is an energy management control system that predicts, regulates and lowers facility peak demand without compromising the functionality of connected equipment. The system organizes coincidental equipment loading while prioritizing uptime, giving facilities the ability to predict and control their peak load profile without painful cutbacks in production or building comfort.
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How Does The Energy Director Work?
The Energy Director monitors energy usage within a facility and automatically reduces and manages peak demand by prioritizing, optimizing and controlling energy loads. It uses Predikt™, a proprietary software program that optimizes energy processes. The result is increased efficiency and significant cost savings. Because the Energy Director can be configured to meet the specific demands of particular facilities, neither product quality, facility output or building comfort is compromised.
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How Much Energy And Money Can Customers Save Using Energy Director?
On average, the Energy Director saves customers 10 – 30 percent on their electricity demand charge. This results in an overall electricity bill savings up to 15 percent. Bills exceeding $100,000 per year typically produce a payback period of less than 24 months with larger facilities often realizing project payback in half that time.
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What Types Of Equipment Can The Energy Director Work With To Achieve Energy Cost Savings?
In current installations, the Energy Director manages equipment such as: air conditioning, fans, melting furnaces, material handling systems, waste processing, food processing and freezing, pumping, drying, and other equipment with high energy levels.
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Where Do The Savings Come From?
In any peak load reduction program, savings will come from a reduction in billed peak demand (kW). Since you are likely billed on a $ per kW rate, then every kW less of peak demand translates to real cost savings on the bill.
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Which Energy Director Model Would Work Best For My Company’s Needs?
Powerit Solutions engineers can perform a site audit to best determine which model of Energy Director, Kompakt™, Klassik™, or Intellekt™, suits a particular facility. Determining factors include the types of equipment to be controlled, the level of system control needed, and specific customer requirements such as information archives, reporting needs, and alarms. See Products to learn more.
As part of the site audit, Powerit Solutions engineers help customers understand their rate structure, analyze their power loads, calculate total project cost, assess savings potential, and compute project ROI. Engineers will then develop a plan to prioritize and optimize their energy consumption in order to start saving money immediately.
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Don’t The Spikes In My Demand Occur When I Start Everything Up In The Morning?
Probably not. Peak demand is calculated by the utility in demand periods called intervals and they are most commonly factored in 15 minute segments. During each separate 15 minutes of the billing period (month), the utility calculates your average electrical load over that period. So, your peak demand for the month will be the 15 minutes during which you used the most total or cumulative amount of electricity, not necessarily the highest instantaneous amount.
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I Need Everything To Run In Order To Maintain Production, So How Can I Implement Load Shedding?
An automated load management application will create savings without affecting production, safety or building comfort.
Facility loads chosen for load shedding are loads that can be reduced or shut down under certain specific circumstances or for very short periods of time. Any loads using electricity to cool, heat or manage the storage and distribution of solids or liquids are candidates for load shedding.
Rules are established for each piece of equipment that limit the amount or timing of the load shedding events to a tolerable level. The system places first priority on these rules to protect production. Because sophisticated load management systems calculate peak demand in real-time, using the same averaging techniques as the utility, load shedding usually only occurs for periods of minutes and even then, only on a few episodes during the entire month.
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What Happens If Things Change In My Facility? How Do I Ensure I Still Get Value Out Of My Savings Investment?
A peak load management system is designed for application as a retrofit into existing sites. It is built to be flexible and the configuration is easily adapted to increases or decreases in plant electrical load or the amount of load shedding equipment.
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What makes your solutions unique within the collection of “cleantech” solutions that put themselves in the category of “energy efficiency”?
There are many good analytical notification solutions on the market today that provide building and plant managers information they can use to make decisions as to how to increase the efficiency of their use of electricity. Powerit’s uniqueness stems from providing a solution that not only enables the user to make better decisions, but also automatically takes control of connected equipment to directly produce these savings.
More importantly, Powerit enables these managers to strike a balance between their savings goals and necessary equipment performance. In simple terms, the end users want to implement a solution for energy savings without losing control of building comfort or productivity levels. Powerit’s product solution has done this and is doing it now. This capability is especially important to those end users wanting to participate in the emerging Demand Response opportunities. Demand Response, in its simplest form, is when an end user lowers their use of electricity on-demand, or in response to a specific event such as a pricing incentive or an emergency utility shortage. Typically these events mean lucrative earnings opportunities for those end user that can curtail. Powerit can tightly orchestrate an end user’s actions during these events such that participation is now not only possible, but more reliable and can be accomplished while maintaining tight control over the building or process.
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Can you give me some examples?
Certainly. Our system at San Jose Mercury News headquarters and printing facility was installed to reduce peak demand by manipulating existing building controls and wound up creating significant monthly electric bill savings totaling over $65K per year. This was done while maintaining the desired comfort levels dictated by the building staff, even during some extremely warm San Jose summers. This system paid for itself in less than 20 months.
The system was also installed at Guadalupe Cooling Company, a fresh food processor, to provide this California food plant a way to participate in lucrative demand response programs offered by the utility while at the same time reducing monthly peak demand charges. Guadalupe had tried several times to take advantage of available DR opportunities by implementing manual curtailment processes but had to “opt out” each time due to the risk that these inconsistent and open-ended interruptions in productivity would get out of control and negate any possible savings on the electric bill. Guadalupe installed an energy management system last winter and has since participated successfully in the utility’s first DR test event this spring. On top of that, the system is configured and ready to allow Guadalupe to realize significant monthly demand charge savings this summer. Take a look at our case studies to learn more about our customers.
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Which Energy Director Model Would Work Best For My Company’s Needs?
Powerit Solutions engineers can perform a site audit to best determine which model of Energy Director, Kompakt™, Klassik™, or Intellekt™, suits a particular facility. Determining factors include the types of equipment to be controlled, the level of system control needed, and specific customer requirements such as information archives, reporting needs, and alarms. See Products to learn more.
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As part of the site audit, Powerit Solutions engineers help customers understand their rate structure, analyze their power loads, calculate total project cost, assess savings potential, and compute project ROI. Engineers will then develop a plan to prioritize and optimize their energy consumption in order to start saving money immediately
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I Already Have An Energy Management Or Building Control System In My Facility, So Why Do I Need Another Control System?
Most existing refrigeration, building or energy management systems focus energy savings on reducing or scheduling kWh usage. They are rarely designed to manage peak demand and almost never automatically reduce it in a cost effective manner. The Energy Director system from Powerit Solutions is designed specifically to manage demand in such a way to produce savings far greater than generic systems can. Also, the Energy Director is compatible with most existing control platforms and can compliment their performance for a more cost effective solution.
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What Is A Demand Response Aggregator?
A Demand Response Aggregator manages the demand response relationship between the end use customer and the utility, while minimizing the risk to both parties. Aggregators manage the risk by aggregating many customers together to form a demand response portfolio for the utility. When the utility calls a demand response event some end use customers may not perform while others may over perform. Overall the aggregator is able to consistently provide the utility a contracted reduction level over the portfolio.
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Is Powerit Solutions A Demand Response Aggregator?
No. Powerit provides enabling technology for end use customers to most easily participate in Demand Response events while minimizing production impacts.
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How Valuable Is Demand Response To The Electric Grid?
It is estimated that a 5% lowering of demand would result in a 50% price reduction during the peak hours of the California electricity crisis in 2000/2001.
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How Is Powerit’s Intelligent Demand Response Different Than Other Enabling Technologies?
Typically other enabling technologies provide what we call Controlled Demand Response. Controlled Demand Response is an open loop control scheme that shuts down a predetermined list of loads for an entire event. This assumes identified loads can be shed for the entire event and the list of loads exactly meets the required demand reduction from the baseline.
Powerit’s Intelligent Demand Response encompasses all loads in the facility that if certain conditions are met would be available for reduction. This allows Powerit to use loads that cannot be added to a predetermined list that are always used for an entire event. During the demand response event the system constantly checks the present facility demand compared to the baseline and contracted demand reduction. If the facility needs to reduce more or less energy to meet the contracted demand reduction the system adjusts the loads run status appropriately based on the load conditions.
This means the Intelligent Demand Response will provide the exact level of demand response reduction desired, no more no less and most importantly, maximize demand response participation while minimizing production impact.
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What Is Embedded Operator Intelligence?
The Energy Director and Predikt software are the result of over 14 years of Demand Management experience. Powerit has found the key to Demand Management is Embedded Operator Intelligence. Embedded Operator Intelligence allows the system to determine in a split second all electrical monetary savings opportunities, combine present load production requirements and buffers, and then what reduction actions, if any, will maximize the financial benefit for the facility. The system enacts the reductions and monitors the savings.
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