Energy Data Visibility

Data visibility, it would seem, is another buzzword of the current times. But is it more than just a buzzword??? I believe the visualisation of data to be a rather empowering tool. Is my data visible? It’s a bit like asking…

“Does my bum look big in this?”

However, unlike asking about one’s own posterior, you should want your data to be visible. If you cannot see your data, you are missing an opportunity. Visible data or VD as I sometimes like to call it, is a massive step towards reducing your energy consumption. Imagine asking your best client…

“Have you got VD?”

Unlike the aforementioned venereal disease. The kind of VD I am referring to, is not just highly beneficial, it is also highly sought after, and here is why.

Your data is organic. It is alive and kicking, growing, flowing through your organisation. It lives on a time line. Like a living organism, it responds to countless outside influences and has the potential to tell a powerful story.

So how can we use this data? Do we have too much data? Do we even have time to analyse and interpret what we are looking at? What other data sources can we utilise? Do we understand what we are looking at and perhaps more importantly do we have the skill set to best utilise this new weapon in our armoury?

Firstly, is it possible to have too much data? Well my mother once boldly claimed that…

“You can never have enough towels”.

This confused a young Jeremy. How many towels should young Jeremy take to the swimming baths? One for each limb perhaps, one for the rest of me and maybe a spare one just in case because as my own mother said - you can never have enough towels.

So how much is too much data? For me there is no such thing as too much data. The key is knowing what to analyse. This comes back to my earlier point of having the time to look and act upon what you see. My advice is to start on a small data set and see what it tells you. Challenge it and see what you can learn from it.

I have also mentioned other data sources, this is where we can become very creative indeed and really earn our mustard. Time for an example and this may be a controversial one. I once had burner management units (BMU) installed on a boiler set. This particular brand of BMU came with software that allowed me to see boiler firing patterns.

WOW!!!!! So is what energy porn looks like!!

The software showed the boilers firing several times during the night when the building was closed. Armed with this data I decided to experiment and programmed the boilers not to fire between 10:00pm and 4:00am if there was no genuine call for heat. The experiment ran 1st April – 30th September.

My heating engineer was against this project. He claimed any gas savings gained, would be far outweighed by the boilers high firing at 4:00am due to the return temperature dropping so low. My heating engineer was correct in that the boilers did high fire at 4:00am, which was due to the return temperature dropping to 30c. However, the data visibility proved the high fire only lasted for 20 minutes. The upshot was that the experiment achieved a 9% reduction in gas consumption, compared to the same period of the previous year, after weather correction.

Yes, you heard me correctly. 9% energy saving !!!!

The point here is that the data visibility prompted not only the investigation, but also the challenge of the boiler control strategy. Which in turn, led to an energy saving that was then verified by the very data visibility that started the whole process.

“Data visibility is its very own circular economy”

The example I have given suggests that data visibility is its very own circular economy. Which of course it is. A free sales slogan for any data supplier perhaps? Feel free to quote me.

I must warn you that if you are going to experiment, you will come up against the usual fossilised, opinionated, gutless naysayers. Who will claim that your ideas WILL NOT work. I use the word “gutless” because saying something will not work, particularly if it goes against the long-standing modus operandi, takes absolutely no guts whatsoever.

The creativity and the courage lie in seeking out and making the challenge. I am sure the Wright brothers came up against the same kind of negative people. However, unlike the Wright brothers and the techniques they employed, data visibility gives us the power to make that challenge.