A chill was felt throughout South Africa on Monday evening. That chill didn’t come from the August winds, but rather Eskom warning that loadshedding might be implemented.
While loadshedding is a constant fear, the cost of electricity warrants investigation into how to become more energy efficient. For the individual this can be done relatively easily, but for a company controlling energy use can be a bit trickier.
One way to address this is with data. But where does one start? According to Priaash Ramadeen, chief executive officer at The Awareness Company, by using sensors to monitor energy usage across the business’ value chain.
“We believe that the awareness needed to ease the burden on the energy grid requires delving deeper into the actual consumption across equipment and different floors and overlaying that with other data points such as occupancy and weather information, to truly understand the impact your organisation has on the energy grid,” says Ramadeen.
According to the CEO, sensors should be installed in as many areas of the business as possible to get a full picture of energy consumption. A fragmented picture of the situation will lead to fragmented results and that’s just a waste of both time and money.
“The data also helps you look into the future, allowing you to project and anticipate future challenges across a broad spectrum, including infrastructure maintenance requirements, security and more. Typically, energy consumption is looked at when there is a problem, and we believe that organisations can benefit by observing this continuously,” says Ramadeen.
Beyond that, having access to energy data can help project the costs of changes to the organisation. Considering a new fleet of PCs? Energy consumption data can help you ensure those PCs match your current usage or come in below it.
“This also needs to go beyond just a graph of consumption, which will ultimately enable an organisation to project costs, understand carbon requirements and determine their compliance levels,” the CEO adds.
Of course, this data can be used to plan out backup power solutions or even alternative energy sources such as solar. While the goal should be to lessen the strain on the grid, we also feel that many businesses want to ease up a reliance on Eskom.
Despite President Ramaphosa outlining a plan to deal with the problems at Eskom, it could be a while still before we start seeing that plan being put into action.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
