If you hope to make changes at your church to reduce energy usage, you need to be able to monitor your systems in real-time.  Your church energy bill simply does not give you the details you need to make smart decisions about where you can reduce energy usage. The bill will not give you insights about how much energy is used for lighting, audio, video, IT, HVAC, or communications systems.  Energy management solutions allow you to get those details that show what’s going on at the system level.

Here’s a quick example of what I am talking about here.  A lot of new cars include an “eco trip” feature.  The purpose of this feature is to assist the driver in saving gas (energy) during each trip.  The dash gives the driver visual feedback in the form of a score or mpg (miles per gallon) rating based on the drivers behavior.  If a driver’s behavior is really aggressive on the road, they will get a bad score.  Conversely, if they pay attention to the score and adjust their behavior, they can get better results.  So as a church, if you know exactly where your energy hogs are, you can adjust their behavior to reduce energy usage in those areas.  This will lead to efficient use and tangible savings.  A monitoring solution provides that real-time feedback.

To monitor your church energy usage, consider these three types of solutions:

Portable Energy Monitoring

There are a handful of portable solutions on the market that allow you to monitor one or two devices at a time.  The idea here is that you plug the monitor into an outlet, and then plug the device that you want to track into the monitor.  The P3 Kill-A-Watt is one such device which gives you a readout of the kWh (kilowatt-hours) right on its display.  Another example out there is the Insteon Hub which does the same thing as the P3 but adds wifi network monitoring from a mobile or web app.  There are also third party apps out there that will allow you to control and monitor the devices that you have connected to the hub.

System Specific Monitoring

Companies that make power conditioners have integrated energy monitoring features into their products.  These products can be dropped into an equipment rack and connected just like a power conditioner.  These are different from traditional power conditioners because they are network connected.  When paired with web apps within the product eco system, end users can remotely track the energy usage of all connected devices down to the specific plug on the back of the unit.  Some examples include the Furman BlueBolt series and the JuiceGoose IP series.

Complete Energy Management System

A complete solution is one that is integrated at the breaker panels at your church or even across several church campuses.  This utility level investment provides real-time data of all energy activities.  When paired with a proprietary software solution, the management system will give facility managers the ability to scrutinize every aspect of usage and possible savings across multiple systems and facilities.  Highly efficient corporations, manufacturing plants, hospitals, government buildings and universities utilize complete energy management systems to maximize their energy usage, productivity, and profits.  This will usually be a custom solution that can be integrated when you build a new facility or retrofitted to existing buildings.

If your church has serious intentions of achieving its energy savings goals, you need one of these solutions to measure your results.

Next time we will discuss automation, the intelligent choice for securing lasting energy savings at your church.