The Benefits of Business Energy Monitoring
Tuesday, 28th June 2022
Whether you’re working to improve your ESG performance, lower energy costs, or just help the planet, monitoring your energy usage is an important step. Why? Because it turns your energy-saving efforts from guesswork into data-driven strategy. And with data, you can be sure about the precise impact you’re having.
But to make this data-led approach a reality, you’ll need to implement a business energy monitoring system. These are systems that track your energy usage, highlight which spaces in your organisation are using the most energy, and tell you exactly where you can increase your efficiency.
With Infogrid, we provide energy monitoring technology that can integrate energy usage data into other building health insights. This way, you can get a deeper understanding of the health and energy efficiency of your building.
Here, we show you the impacts that business energy monitoring can have for business owners—and how you can get started.
What is a business energy monitor?
A business energy monitor is a device that can be installed in your business buildings to give you live information on your energy consumption and usage trends. In short, it gives you concrete insights into how your business is performing in terms of energy use.
You might be thinking that a business energy monitor sounds a little like a smart meter—and it’s true, they’re very similar tools. But there are key differences for businesses. Firstly, energy monitors don’t send data to your energy suppliers, unlike smart meters. And more significantly, they give you deeper insights into your energy use, including:
Overall energy usage across your building and business. So you can understand exactly how much energy your business is consuming.
Patterns of usage. Specifically, energy monitoring can tell you at which time of day most energy is used and which parts of the building have the highest energy usage.
How much you’re paying. You can receive live information on gas and electricity bills and compare them to how much they cost you previously.
Your carbon emissions. Energy monitors don’t just show you how much energy you’ve used. They also provide data on the impact your usage will have on the environment.
While a smart meter can serve some of the same purposes, business energy monitors are designed specifically to help you really get to grips with your energy usage. That means that, rather than being hidden away in your utility room, your energy monitor will provide insights that allow your business to take action.
But is an energy monitor worth the investment? Let us tell you why it is:
Why monitor your business energy use?
There are so many reasons why it’s worth investing in business energy monitoring. Not only do they tend to be quick and easy to install—but the benefits are wide-ranging.
You’ll improve your ESG performance. Environmental, social, and governance metrics are beginning to inform investment decisions across the world—and part of what investors are looking at is business energy usage. Indeed, it’s predicted that by 2025, half of European investment funds will be ESG, while 77% of investors say that they won’t purchase any non-ESG products by the end of 2022.
You’ll meet your business obligations. Soon, ESG won’t just be a ‘nice to have’. From the EU to the UK and the US, regulations are slowly being introduced to formalise mandatory ESG reporting. Business energy monitoring will make all the difference.
Monitoring means lower bills. External obligations aside, energy monitoring brings concrete business benefits. Here, we’re talking lower bills. Studies show that monitoring your energy consumption can help reduce your consumption by 2-3%.
You’ll attract talent. Infogrid research found that 40% of employees would be more likely to stay at a company if it had a plan to achieve net zero emissions. The same percentage said they’d be attracted to a company if it did the same. Energy monitoring will be a crucial part of any net zero strategy.
You’ll learn exactly how to save energy. By tracking your energy usage, you’ll know where you can drive efficiencies—whether that’s in your lighting, HVAC, or security systems.
How modern business energy monitoring solutions work
So, you’ve seen the benefits that energy monitoring can offer. But how does it work? With Infogrid’s solution, smart energy monitoring happens in three main steps:
IoT devices. Our energy monitoring system is powered by the Internet of Things. Devices are installed onto your energy meters that can track data on electricity, gas, and water usage in real time. Then, that data is shared wirelessly across your buildings.
AI empowerment. Sensor data is fed through our proprietary artificial intelligence system to produce actionable and benchmarkable insights into your energy usage patterns. This way, you’ll know exactly where you can optimise efficiency.
Data dashboard. Finally, all that energy usage data is fed onto a single screen: our building monitoring dashboard. Here, you can understand how much energy is being used, when, and at which parts of your site.
But that’s not all. At Infogrid, there’s so much more that we can do to make energy monitoring—and reporting—as easy and insightful as possible.
How we can improve your building energy monitoring
While there are other energy monitoring systems out there, we offer more to ensure you get the most from your data:
Our system can overlay energy data with other data fields, including occupancy, air quality, temperature monitoring, and overall building health. This lets you see how your energy consumption is impacted across the different elements of your site.
At a time when businesses are under competing obligations—to improve air quality, ventilation, efficiency, and more—this will be crucial.
We provide continued support. You don’t have to kickstart your energy monitoring journey all by yourself. Infogrid will be there to optimise deployment, interpret data, and ensure complete site coverage.
We help with data validation and formatting for ESG. If you’re monitoring energy consumption for ESG purposes, we can support you with your reporting needs. ESG can be a minefield: full of boxes to tick and data formatting issues—but you don’t need to navigate it alone.
Our system’s strength is in its predictive capacities. Infogrid’s system won’t just tell you how much energy you’ve used. Instead, it will show you the impact of particular energy-saving actions. For strategic planning, this knowledge can be indispensable.
The benefits you can see from business energy monitoring
Our energy monitoring system is having an impact already. Infogrid is helping companies across the world cut carbon, reduce their energy bills, and create a more energy efficient environment for their staff and customers.
We helped a supermarket cut 800 tonnes of carbon every year—equivalent to $1.6 million saved annually on their energy bills.
For Credit Suisse, our energy monitoring system identified actions to reduce carbon use, resulting in €40,000 saved every year.
Combined with our predictive maintenance capabilities, we helped one company reduce their energy emissions from maintenance callouts by over 90%.
We can help your business achieve these concrete results yourself. Find out how by booking a demo.
