As an Operations guy, I’m a big believer in: “You can’t fix it if you don’t measure it”. This is a tried and true formula for getting your arms around a quantifiable problem, and then working it over and over to a point of economic optimization. A great example of that is something known as The Prius Effect. The Toyota Prius came out with a new information display about energy consumption and generation – that had never before been seen in automobiles. Consequently, Prius owners (of which I’m a proud member) started driving with one eye on the meter to see how they could maximize their fuel economy. I saw reports from Prius chat rooms that went over 70mpg.
How does this apply to Responsible Energy? In the U.S. alone, over $300 billion a year is spent on electricity by residential, commercial, and industrial consumers. Electricity makes up over 40% of the use of primary energy sources. Some have estimated that saving even 5% of that electric energy would result in avoiding $50 billion in energy plant investments, and provide the equivalent CO2 benefit of removing 50 million cars from U.S. roads. However, that will not be achieved if we don’t measure where the energy is being consumed, and find a myriad of innovative ways to manage it or avoid needing it.
These sorts of measurement systems are already well understood at the utility and large industrial level. However, as you move further down the food chain there is a nascent (and burgeoning) industry of meter and monitoring suppliers who are just now getting traction to help the commercial and residential consumer. These solutions get beyond the utility meter, and get into sub-metering: How much energy is the HVAC system consuming? The data center? The refrigerator? These meters are only useful to the consumer if they are connected to monitoring systems that can intelligently display the energy information to allow the user to make decisions.
Some people believe this is simply a “Green” perspective aimed at minimizing our carbon footprint, and that it doesn’t really affect the corporate bottom-line. However, consider that the 5% savings above represents $15 billion per year in expense savings, and the avoidance of $50 billion in capital expenditures. Those are numbers that are difficult for anyone to ignore. And, in this economy, smart consumers are looking everywhere they can to reduce costs.
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Ron Lloyd, COO
Tags: carbon footprint, energy consumption, Prius, Responsible Energy, sub metering