What is Data-Driven Energy Efficiency?

Any business or organization wants to run more efficiently, reduce costs, and increase productivity. Energy efficiency is one of the best ways to accomplish these goals. While some believe that energy efficiency requires expensive equipment upgrades with lengthy payback periods and massive deployments of internal manpower, there are better ways to achieve energy efficiency. Many of those opportunities are hidden in readily-available energy data.

Through data-driven energy efficiency, businesses can align their energy efficiency strategies with information from real-time data streams from smart meters, building management systems, and other monitoring equipment. Data-driven energy efficiency enables energy users to target greater efficiencies by looking at their actual, real-time energy use patterns for low and no-cost energy savings opportunities. Most utility bills do not provide enough detail to determine where waste is occurring, but data-driven energy efficiency unlocks money-saving opportunities through more detailed data streams.

Even better, data-driven energy efficiency is future-proof.  Efficiency does not have to be achieved through a commitment to expensive, soon-to-be-obsolete equipment upgrades. Instead, businesses can use real-time energy data to recognize areas for operational improvements, or correct inadvertent over-consumption. Companies can then use this data to make operational changes and set alerts to watch for waste in certain areas of their systems, while still maintaining the same output. The data captured though data-driven energy efficiency programs help businesses and organizations recognize areas for improvement and run their operations more productively throughout the year.

Finally, data-driven energy efficiency can help savings persist over time. Where one-time upgrades and fixes can correct short-term problems, inefficiencies are bound to crop up over the long term. Data-driven energy efficiency helps businesses and organizations track real-time performance over time to ensure that results remain persistent, saving money and energy, year after year.