Advanced Demand Management Systems (ADMS) is the culmination of on-site generation and creative control of HVAC, lighting, and other building systems to manipulate a given utility rate structure while saving energy and reducing a customer’s impact on the electric grid.
EnergyLink’s process begins with a utility rate structure analysis to determine how a customer’s utility provider is charging them. This is the basis of the design of an ADMS package, as it is necessary to control the building in such a way as to take full advantage of the billing metrics and avoid costly behaviors.
Our Innovative Process
The progression of design:
- Determine opportunity to leverage utility structure (rate tariff analysis)
- Assess customer utility billing history (determine if there is indeed significant potential)
- Obtain granular usage data for the building (this is sometimes available from the utility provider, and other times it is necessary to install our own data logger for several days, weeks, or months)
- Determine how much we can manipulate daily load curve (most often, this is a factor of HVAC capacity and how much on-site generation capacity can be installed)
- Create control logic to enable the system to function based on desired limitations
- Design and spec on-site generation to meet the demands of load curve reduction
- Project future usage and demand based on calculated performance (this is fed back into our billing calculator to see how a given rate structure may impact the realized dollar savings)
- Install and program
The critical part of generating accurate cost savings estimates is utilizing our rate tariff analysis and plugging in the projected usage. Many people don’t realize it, but simply using less electricity each month does not necessarily guarantee that you will be charged less money for it. Many utilities are adopting new, more complex methods of formulating your final bill based on multiple factors.
For example, sometimes the price you pay per kWh of consumption is determined by a ratio of your consumption to your demand each month. This effectively means that it’s possible to be charged more money for using less energy, or charged less for using the same amount of energy. It is of paramount importance to do this analysis with every project to ensure that the future behavior of the building will take full advantage of all of the nuanced rules enclosed in the customer’s rate structure.
We connect your energy assets together with an automation controller. Generally, we opt to use Honeywell products for the controls, however we can often utilize any controls that are already installed in the building. We can simply program our new logic into the customer’s existing controls system in that case.
We encourage the customers to connect their system to a wireless network so that we can monitor its performance remotely and ensure that it remains healthy and functioning over time. When installing solar as part of such a project, we spec inverters that have this functionality built in for solar monitoring, however additional controls hardware is sometimes necessary in order to monitor HVAC and other building systems remotely.
ADMS, with the help of EnergyLink, can lower your electric bills by 15-30%.
