As businesses expand and new industries emerge, like semiconductors and data centers, electricity consumption is significantly rising.
In December 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that the average electricity price nationally for commercial customers was 12.76 cents per kilowatt-hour, a 4.2 percent increase over the previous year. Industrial and other high-energy consumers saw a 5.3 percent increase during that period. According to Utility Dive, the utility rate hikes hit business owners hard and even outpaced the broader inflation rate. The higher utility bills compounded with rising operational costs and ultimately negatively impacted many businesses’ profitability and cash flow.
Other contributing factors to the rising price of electricity are the electrification of transportation, policy-driven shifts from gas to electric appliances, and climate changes increasing heating and cooling requirements. With the rising rates and an aging grid infrastructure compromising grid resiliency, building owners have been seeking strategies to reduce energy consumption and costs. Strategies may range from installing LED lighting systems, migrating to smart building controls, and adding backup power generation and alternative energy solutions like solar and microgrid solutions to reduce the energy requirements at their facilities.
Energy modeling is the first step to understanding the right strategies to improve energy performance. Once building owners collect and analyze utility information, they can start to understand and benchmark operational efficiency and which upgrades or strategies apply to each site’s unique conditions.
When a facility or campus integrates power management software into its decision-making process, results may include avoidance of power factors and peak demand penalties by identifying when and where power factor issues occur within the facility and equipment.
An equipment performance analysis further supports proactive and preventative maintenance practices that extend asset life by dynamically adjusting loads and controlling high-power equipment, managing demand and performance within set limits. In addition, modeling paints a better picture of how equipment usage impacts each asset’s remaining useful life. When properly implemented, the data, can be used to maintain the equipment proactively, resulting in less unplanned downtime.
With real-time data identifying potential power quality issues, building owners can use the insights to build future capital improvement plans, resulting in better financial results. The energy and power quality information can highlight deteriorating or inefficient equipment that consumes excessive energy and help target the right investments, prioritizing upgrades where energy savings and reliability improvements can justify the cost.
Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled technologies, like power monitoring, can support safer, more reliable power quality. Digitizing low-voltage and medium-voltage systems within a building enables monitoring of energy consumption. When a building owner monitors the performance within their facilities, innovation can be fostered, enabling enhanced connectivity, real-time operational data, and smart analytics for informed decision-making, resulting in total facilities optimization.
Stark Tech is a market-leading technology provider of facilities and energy solutions. It customizes solutions and services to keep facilities and assets running smoothly while achieving energy efficiency and power resiliency goals identified through data-driven actions and insights. Additionally, Stark Tech has in-house engineering expertise to add renewable energy sources to the power mix with microgrid and battery energy storage solutions and solar development consulting services. Stark Tech manufactures large, skidded equipment that decarbonizes and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by converting waste to renewable natural gas.
This article was originally featured on the Buffalo Business First website. To view the original article, click here.
