What Is Demand Control?
What Is Demand Response?
What Is The Energy Director™?
How Does The Energy Director Work?
How Much Energy And Money Can Customers Save Using Energy Director?
What Types Of Equipment Can The Energy Director Work With To Achieve Energy Cost Savings?
Where Do The Savings Come From?
Is The Energy Director Right For My Company?
Which Energy Director Model Would Work Best For My Company’s Needs?
Who Are Your Customers?
Don’t The Spikes In My Demand Occur When I Start Everything Up In The Morning?
I Need Everything To Run In Order To Maintain Production, So How Can I Implement Load Shedding?
What Happens If Things Change In My Facility?
How Do I Ensure I Still Get Value Out Of My Savings Investment?
I Already Have An Energy Management Or Building Control System In My Facility, So Why Do I Need Another Control System?
When Did Powerit Solutions Open Its Doors For Business?
What Is Demand Control?
Demand Control, also called demand management, is the process of understanding where, when and why energy demand spikes occur and taking ongoing, automatic measures to reduce them or shift them with minimal impact on facility operations.
What Is Demand Response?
Demand response is the concept of end-use customers changing their electric energy usage in response to changes in electricity rates or incentives provided by utility companies. The goal for utility companies is to lower system-wide demand during peak times through controlled loads rather than building additional power generation infrastructure. Demand response, although around for years, is emerging now as utilities’ most promising method of dealing with increased pressure on their supply during high usage times such as summer peak hours. It is less expensive for utilities to create incentives for industrial and commercial users to lower their energy demand during peak times than it is for utilities to produce additional electricity and sell it to those who cannot alter their energy consuming behavior.
What Is The Energy Director™?
Developed in Sweden in 1994, the Energy Director is an energy management control system that predicts, regulates and lowers facility peak demand without compromising the functionality of connected equipment. The system organizes coincidental equipment loading while prioritizing uptime, giving facilities the ability to predict and control their peak load profile without painful cutbacks in production or building comfort.
How Does The Energy Director Work?
The Energy Director monitors energy usage within a facility and automatically reduces and manages peak demand by prioritizing, optimizing and controlling energy loads. It uses Predikt™, a proprietary software program that optimizes energy processes. The result is increased efficiency and significant cost savings. Because the Energy Director can be configured to meet the specific demands of particular facilities, neither product quality, facility output or building comfort is compromised.
How Much Energy And Money Can Customers Save Using Energy Director?
On average, the Energy Director saves customers 10 – 30 percent on their electricity demand charge. This results in an overall electricity bill savings up to 15 percent. Bills exceeding $100,000 per year typically produce a payback period of less than 24 months with larger facilities often realizing project payback in half that time.
What Types Of Equipment Can The Energy Director Work With To Achieve Energy Cost Savings?
In current installations, the Energy Director manages equipment such as: air conditioning, fans, melting furnaces, material handling systems, waste processing, food processing and freezing, pumping, drying, and other equipment with high energy levels.
Where Do The Savings Come From?
In any peak load reduction program, savings will come from a reduction in billed peak demand (kW). Since you are likely billed on a $ per kW rate, then every kW less of peak demand translates to real cost savings on the bill.
Is The Energy Director Right For My Company?
The Energy Director is ideal for industrial and commercial facilities that:
• Have annual energy bills of $100,000 or more
• Have a peak demand of 750kW or more
• Have a demand profile that is erratic or "spiky"; one that exhibits variability
Which Energy Director Model Would Work Best For My Company’s Needs?
Powerit Solutions engineers can perform a site audit to best determine which model of Energy Director, Kompakt™, Klassik™, or Intellekt™, suits a particular facility. Determining factors include the types of equipment to be controlled, the level of system control needed, and specific customer requirements such as information archives, reporting needs, and alarms. See Products to learn more.
As part of the site audit, Powerit Solutions engineers help customers understand their rate structure, analyze their power loads, calculate total project cost, assess savings potential, and compute project ROI. Engineers will then develop a plan to prioritize and optimize their energy consumption in order to start saving money immediately
Who Are Your Customers?
The Energy Director has been installed in more than 500 facilities worldwide, across a variety of industries. Currently, we have over 50 systems operating in the United States and Mexico. We are generating savings in industries such as food processing, cold storage, metal foundries, newspapers, wineries, ice arenas and commercial/retail buildings. IKEA, Frito Lay, Foster Farms, Federal Mogul, Del Mar Foods, California Steel, San Jose Mercury News, Pacific Steel Casting, Paul Masson Wine, and P&O Cold Logistics are examples of our customers.
Don’t The Spikes In My Demand Occur When I Start Everything Up In The Morning?
Probably not. Peak demand is calculated by the utility in demand periods called intervals and they are most commonly factored in 15 minute segments. During each separate 15 minutes of the billing period (month), the utility calculates your average electrical load over that period. So, your peak demand for the month will be the 15 minutes during which you used the most total or cumulative amount of electricity, not necessarily the highest instantaneous amount.
I Need Everything To Run In Order To Maintain Production, So How Can I Implement Load Shedding?
An automated load management application will create savings without affecting production, safety or building comfort.
Facility loads chosen for load shedding are loads that can be reduced or shut down under certain specific circumstances or for very short periods of time. Any loads using electricity to cool, heat or manage the storage and distribution of solids or liquids are candidates for load shedding.
Rules are established for each piece of equipment that limit the amount or timing of the load shedding events to a tolerable level. The system places first priority on these rules to protect production. Because sophisticated load management systems calculate peak demand in real-time, using the same averaging techniques as the utility, load shedding usually only occurs for periods of minutes and even then, only on a few episodes during the entire month.
What Happens If Things Change In My Facility? How Do I Ensure I Still Get Value Out Of My Savings Investment?
A peak load management system is designed for application as a retrofit into existing sites. It is built to be flexible and the configuration is easily adapted to increases or decreases in plant electrical load or the amount of load shedding equipment.
I Already Have An Energy Management Or Building Control System In My Facility, So Why Do I Need Another Control System?
Most existing refrigeration, building or energy management systems focus energy savings on reducing or scheduling kWh usage. They are rarely designed to manage peak demand and almost never automatically reduce it in a cost effective manner. The Energy Director system from Powerit Solutions is designed specifically to manage demand in such a way to produce savings far greater than generic systems can. Also, the Energy Director is compatible with most existing control platforms and can compliment their performance for a more cost effective solution.
When Did Powerit Solutions Open Its Doors For Business?
We opened our North American headquarters in Seattle, Washington, in January 2002.
