How monitoring energy use on commercial buildings can reduce energy costs

Energy monitoring is essential for understanding your energy consumption and managing your energy costs. Due to rising energy prices, it’s now more important than ever to analyse and reduce your energy use. Here we look at the benefits of monitoring your energy use, the challenges commercial buildings face and the solutions available.

What is energy monitoring?

Energy monitoring is the process of analysing and assessing your energy consumption, which can be tracked via Energy Monitoring Software (EMS). Energy monitoring is a management technique used to eliminate waste and control the amount of energy used to help improve overall consumption and carbon footprint.

Challenges commercial buildings face

Buildings in the UK make up a significant part of our carbon emissionsnd as part of the governments Clean Growth Strategy, they’re focused on decarbonising houses and buildings as much as possible to meet the 2050 net zero target. According to UKGBC’s The Built Environment is currently responsible for 25% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions.

New research reported on by Energy Live News has shown that thousands of commercial properties across the country won’t meet new energy efficiency regulations which may potentially disrupt businesses and could incur fines if they aren’t meeting the minimum requirements.

Commercial buildings should have at least an EPC rating of E or above from 1^st April 2023 and a minimum rating of C by 2030.

However, this is just one of many challenges and obstacles that can arise regarding commercial buildings and recording their energy usage including:

• The overall maintenance of a building and the overuse of water can lead to leaks and unused pipes, costing your business thousands in unnecessary costs. Leaks can be time consuming to source and fix causing harm to a buildings structure if the leak goes undetected over a long period of time. The cost to repair can also be high and can create disruption in your business operations too. When pipes go unused for some time, this can cause damage to the internal infrastructure of building’s and cause potential hazards when turning the taps back on, due to bacteria that grows.
• Buildings are responsible for 40% of global energy consumption and 33% of greenhouse gas emissions, improving your buildings energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions is key to reducing costs.
• It can also be difficult to secure funding for individual projects to help energy efficiency in commercial buildings. There are a number of grants and schemes provided by the government available but discovering the right plan for your project is key.

What benefits can energy monitoring and targeting bring your business?

Although energy and facilities managers face many challenges when it comes to maintaining and improving their buildings, energy monitoring and targeting will enable you to determine where to focus your attention to achieve the best results. An EMS gives you the power to:

• Take control of your consumption
• Stay on top of your expenditure
• Reduce energy costs through improved management
• Quickly identify overuse
• Get a handle on your carbon footprint and reach net zero goals quicker
• Collect improved data to make better informed decisions.
• Identify peak usage times as and when they happen.

By implementing an EMS with the support of Automated Meter Reads (AMR) and the intelligence of  , your energy data can become a powerful tool to help you achieve your energy and carbon reduction goals.

Don’t just take our word for it…

See how we helped The University of Reading with their energy monitoring and targeting

The University of Reading can now easily monitor and control energy consumption across their growing campus with the help of SystemsLink’s Energy Manager Software. The software underpins the University’s understanding and handling of energy.

For Jo Burton, Energy Analyst at the University of Reading, our Smart Spaces module along with our monitoring and targeting service has benefited the University significantly.

“We have ISO 50001 and the data monitoring and targeting requirements of that are mostly done through Energy Manager. The two sides of that are measuring savings from investment projects, which I verify using data downloaded from Energy Manager, and the day-to-day monitoring of energy which we do through batch validation and Smart Spaces.”

How we can help to reduce your buildings energy costs

There are several solutions to ensure energy monitoring in buildings is done efficiently and accurately.

An EMS can help to accurately measure usage with an equipment-level view and identify any areas over excess consumption. SystemsLink’s Energy Management Software has proven to be as in-depth and intuitive as it is easy to install and use. This allows you to analyse and monitor all your utilities and it is designed to scope out any waste or overspend.

Data Automation analyses consumption issues and equipment faults promptly, supporting with Automated Meter Reads (AMR) that can monitor an entire building’s energy usage in real time, which makes logging data efficient and useful.

Work alongside a dedicated expert

Our experts have helped many energy and facility managers with their energy monitoring and targeting to reduce their energy costs and improve carbon footprint. We can help to identify any areas where energy is consumed and record the total level of consumption at the specific site, asses the data provided to monitor any trends. We can also develop energy baselines, set satisfactory reduction targets, and continually monitor the progress throughout.

Energy monitoring and targeting plays a key part in the smooth running of commercial buildings so when energy is tracked and monitored well, it can generate large savings within your business. If energy is not managed efficiently, problems can occur in a company’s financial performance from the result of overspending from overconsumption of energy.