Triacta Power Technologies Inc.

Getting the Most from Your Smart Meter
Extracting value from smart meters in multi-tenant buildings
Rob Brennan, President & CEO
Triacta

There has been a lot of hype over the benefits of smart metering for multi-tenant buildings such as condominiums, apartments and commercial buildings. However, to extract the real value from smart meters, consumers need information that can help them to make wiser decisions and ultimately change bad energy-use intensive habits.

Getting more from your meter
Most utilities and billing companies provide consumers with time-of-use information in one-hour increments. This is simply insufficient – hourly information does not provide the detail needed for consumers to understand their own consumption patterns. While the hourly-increment approach reduces the amount of data collected and simplifies the billing process, it actually conceals useful information that would be of great benefit to consumers.

Better data, better outcomes
With five-minute monitoring increments, consumers are able to relate specific actions to their consumption patterns. For instance, Graph 1 shows that large amounts of power are being consumed between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. In contrast, it is impossible to determine that consumption pattern from the hourly view that is provided in Graph 2. Both graphs are from the same meter measurements, just displayed in different resolutions.

Higher resolution becomes even more important for commercial customers, many of which pay a ‘demand’ charge based on the highest 15-minute consumption period of the billing cycle.

What are your choices?
Multi-tenant organizations have the consolidated buying power to demand more value from their meter providers. It should not be the billing companies that reap the value from smart meters. Find out what your local utility offers in the way of energy-use data. If your local utility or billing company will not provide your information in a useful form, it’s time to find another provider. Your choice today will influence your energy-management decisions and capabilities for years to come.

Rob Brennan has 25 years of technology experience. His background includes telecommunications management and engineering, data-over-hydro technologies and power supply design. Rob co-holds three patents and has three others filed.