Consumer is a King Nowadays
Changing Habits of Consumers’ Energy Consumption and Production
Conventional grids which power follows from power generation sources like solar, wind etc to consumer in just one direction, is changing rapidly as CEC points out that an average of six solar panels a minute are being installed in Australia .We have already facing bi directional electricity flow from many power generation points like rooftops to the grid. Consumer drive the change!!!. Innovative energy efficiency solutions and digitalisation via energy management systems can meet customer`s expectations.
Consumers are Now Prosumers
In old days, while consumers were asking just uninterrupted electricity supplies. Nowadays, consumers would like to sell their electricity to the grid when their consumption is lower than their production as considering in the last decade electricity price have risen more than 100%.
There Is Only a One Grid with a Limited Capacity
This big transformation has already brought many challenges to distribution companies. There are different solutions to manage these challenges and to increase capacity of the grid like regulation voltage with reactive power control as explained in our previous blog .
Big Data for Consumers
In addition to considering how to increase the capacity and resilience of the grid, we should also focus on how to reduce consumption of consumers.
Under new rules, your electricity retailer will provide consumers smart meters when a new meter is needed.
Smart meters provide consumption data to consumers and the idea is to give consumers their consumption data so that they can reduce their electricity bill. However, smart meter applications also brought new issues that should be taken into consideration like there is no data format, so consumers can understand or access their data easily. Alternatively, consumers can work with third party to help them access their data, but the privacy and security of data is unclear.
Steps to Energy Management System for Useful Information Not for Big Data
The way of the future for consumers are to use smart energy management systems to manage their power usage to reduce electricity bill. The purpose of energy management system is to reduce electricity bill for its customers, but the method is little bit different.
This Is How They Work
Energy management system (EMS) means that monitoring, analyzing and managing your energy consumption, production.
The energy management systems combine IoT devices and software apps. EMS providers install their IoT device in your switchboard, then these devices send not only your energy usage data but also production data or battery data. It is quite different than smart meters. When these bid data come to software app, it is already meaningful information for their consumers. By managing energy in and out, consumers will have control over their electricity bill.
One Step Further
Some of Energy management systems can also show consumers their equipment or appliance electricity consumption even control them remotely, so consumers can change their appliance or equipment or complete their maintenance in advance to create energy saving opportunity.
Building energy performance can also be improved by effective monitoring and management. Different business segments have different performance criteria for example, consumption/m2, kwh /occupant rate for hotels. EMS helps to track these KPIs with related metrics. Hence, business owners can find effective solutions to reduce the consumption. They can also set a target value for their consumption to see if there is any deviation. By these actions, businesses can save up to 25 %.
Innovation in Energy Is a Key
Change in expectation of consumer shape our energy market from grid level to residentials. This brought different challenges and opportunities for all stakeholders.
These challenges open innovation doors to everyone. Now, we are talking about smart energy management systems, IoT devices, developments in smart metering applications.
Innovation is only way to meet consumers expectations and to be in the game & competitive for businesses in energy field for businesses. Innovation should bring energy efficiency at the same time. Increase in the capacity of grid to cope with increasing in solar penetration may not be enough. This will be very expensive, unless innovative energy efficiency solutions are in place to explain people how to create saving opportunities and how to manage energy usage.
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