Monitoring and metering your energy use

Understanding how your business uses energy allows you to manage your consumption effectively. It means you can set targets for improving energy efficiency and reduce your energy costs and carbon emissions. You could reduce energy consumption by up to 20 per cent, but most businesses aim for a 5 per cent overall reduction in their first year.

Energy monitoring and metering process

You'll need to have a process for monitoring and measuring your current energy consumption. This involves:

• analysing your energy bills
• measuring your use of each different type of energy
• recording energy use - larger organisations might consider installing different meter technologies that gives information about different areas of the business
• regularly collecting data on energy use by reading meters and sub-meters
• analysing the meter data to see where you can save energy - for example, looking at the effect on energy use of things like the weather or production levels

Put in place a monitoring and targeting system

A monitoring and targeting (M&T) system allows you to compare data about energy consumption to the things that affect it, such as the weather, production figures or other variables. You can then see where energy waste can be reduced in buildings, processes and vehicles.

To help you meet your targets, you may want to appoint an energy manager who will be in charge of the M&T system and responsible for collecting and analysing your energy data.

To put your M&T system in to practice you'll need:

• energy consumption data
• data on the factors that affect your energy consumption, such as weather conditions, production figures or other variables
• methods for calculating your expected consumption