Intelligent metering for energy savings in small and medium sized enterprises: Experiences at the local level in 5 European countries

摘要

Increasing numbers of European local and regional publicauthorities have been working towards energy and carbon dioxidereduction targets for their local areas. Many have beendeveloping programmes and initiatives addressing consumptionin different energy end-use sectors in order to contributeto these targets, including the small to medium sized enterprise(SME) sector. Local and regional authorities have been able torespond to key issues faced by European SMEs, such as risingenergy prices and increased pressures to respond to climatechange, by offering various support to SMEs with managingtheir utility costs and reducing their carbon emissions.This paper describes an approach to identifying energy savingopportunities in SMEs through the analysis of sub hourlycollected electricity, gas/heat and water data. About 70 SMEpremises of a range of sizes and types from Austria, Hungary,Poland, Portugal, and the UK recorded consumption data frommeters on a half or quarter hourly basis. The data was assessedto identify savings opportunities, training sessions and visitswere provided to the businesses and ongoing energy and watermonitoring was undertaken, highlighting unusual consumptionand possible areas for savings.While it was found that meeting the initial cost of intelligentmetering can be a barrier to involving SMEs, when detailedconsumption profiles had been obtained this was an effectiveway of engaging many SMEs with looking at energy efficiency.The combination of data collection, data analysis and presentationof the data to the small/medium-sized business managerscan reduce both the greenhouse gas emissions and the operatingcosts of SMEs.Various energy savings have been obtained in different typesof SMEs taking part, highlighting the opportunities for the useof intelligent metering/smart metering, and the data collected,by local/regional authorities, agencies, and utilities to helpachieve energy and carbon savings in the SME sector.