We’re pleased to bring you this post from our guest blogger, Jimmy Jia, CEO of Distributed Energy Management:
All business practices and behaviors consume energy. The more detail a manager can view, the better their decision making process can be. Indeed, making decisions based on guesses can be very harmful.
Fortunately, energy data is only becoming more abundant. The proliferation of smart meters and automated device means data is everywhere. Unfortunately, interpretation of data has not kept pace with generation of data. At Distributed Energy Management, we have focused on helping CFOs make fiscally disciplined decisions and to understand the tradeoffs of their options.
One of our clients was a high-rise commercial building in the Seattle downtown core. The managers wanted to find ways to reduce energy consumed at night. One challenge was that the building used an evening janitorial service, requiring the lights to be on until late into the night. They were interested in knowing if there would be any energy savings by moving to a daytime janitorial service.
At first glance, their smart meter data exhibited a lot of noise and it was very difficult to see any trends. With further analysis, we discovered that there was a small but noticeable drop in energy consumption at 2AM every day of the work week. Using some advanced statistical techniques, we determined that the evening janitorial service made up approximately 5% of their energy bill. The results helped the client perform a cost/benefit analysis of daytime janitorial service.
For this particular client, the disruption of daytime janitorial services to the tenants did not justify the cost savings in energy. Although they decided not to change their behavior, the client can confidently know that they made the right decision.
Jimmy Jia
CEO, Distributed Energy Management