By Steve Heinz
Nov. 3, 2011
As tougher environmental regulations lead utilities nationwide to upgrade their infrastructure and build new or retrofitted power plants, their customers — including organizations of all sizes — will have to keep track of their energy usage and billing in order to understand how their costs and consumption will consequently change. It comes as no surprise, then, that large organizations are expected to quadruple their 2010 spending on energy management software by 2014. As organizations recognize that energy expenses are one of the most controllable line items in their budget, they will increasingly make a comparatively modest investment in software that helps them keep those costs down.
That’s just one example of why tracking energy costs and consumption patterns should be the foundation of your energy strategy. Managing your energy in this way lays important groundwork and provides the necessary information to understand how you use energy – which is necessary before making efforts to reduce costs and usage.
By tracking and analyzing your utility bills and energy consumption, you can identify inefficient facilities, spot billing errors, prepare budgets and generate comprehensive energy and sustainability reports – saving energy, time and money. And when it comes to putting energy saving programs in place, tracking energy costs and usage will allow you to make better decisions in maintaining, improving or eliminating these programs by identifying their true effectiveness.
How does tracking your costs and consumption patterns help you be more energy efficient? Let’s say you’re planning to install “more efficient” light bulbs or fixtures throughout your organization’s buildings. At the end of the year, you can look back and see whether your overall energy costs and consumption have increased or decreased – but it’s not that simple. Without more detailed information that comes from tracking changes over time, as well as the interaction of external factors, you will not have a complete overview of your energy efficiency, nor a true answer as to whether any energy savings were due to the new bulbs or to something entirely different.