Background Story
A leading retail chain, with over a dozen stores, faced rising energy costs, poor asset management, and growing demands for sustainability. The chain's flagship stores and smaller outlets had various energy-consuming assets, including HVAC systems, lighting, and office equipment. However, the retailer lacked a centralized system to monitor and manage energy usage, making it challenging to identify inefficiencies and track energy consumption across multiple sites.
The retail chain was seeking a one-stop shop to centralize all of its consumption, utility, and emission data.
Problems
The retailer encountered several challenges in managing, energy, utility, and emissions:
- Dispersed Energy Consumption: with multiple stores across several locations, the retailer struggled to track energy consumption efficiently across various assets
- Fragmented Utility Data: different assets and utility providers lacked integration, making it hard to manage overall energy use and optimize consumption
- Inaccurate Utility Billing: The retailer faced challenges with utility billing, including discrepancies in charges and a lack of transparency in energy consumption by store and asset type
- Limited Carbon Tracking: The retailer was unable to easily track and report its carbon emissions, making it difficult to meet sustainability goals and regulatory requirements
Main Objective
The focus was to enable the retailer through a unified platform access to all this data to:
- Provide real-time, centralized monitoring of energy consumption across all stores and assets
- Improve utility management by integrating various energy-consuming assets and optimizing their operation through monitoring and asset prioritization
- Optimize utility management by consolidating energy usage data from multiple assets and utility providers
- Enable proactive decision-making and energy savings by providing actionable insights and performance metrics
- Improve carbon emissions tracking and reporting, ensuring compliance with sustainability regulations
Approach
To ensure the retailer met their objectives all 3 super modules were deployed:
- Cloud-Based Data Integration: Was deployed across all stores, distribution centers, and warehouses, integrating data from a variety of assets, including lighting, HVAC systems, and other energy-intensive equipment
- Consolidated Utility Management: The system centralized utility data from multiple suppliers, allowing for easier tracking, analysis, and optimization of energy costs across the retailer’s entire portfolio
- Bill Capture: Automated data ingestion from utility bills helped eliminate manual errors
- AI-Driven Analytics and Alerts: leveraged predictive analytics to forecast energy demand and optimize the operation of energy-intensive systems
- Energy Dashboarding and Reporting: The system provided targeted energy dashboards to keep track of relevant and problematic equipment
- Seamless Connection: The three supermodules seamlessly interacted with each other translating consumption data into billing and emissions data
- Automated Carbon Reporting and Compliance: The platform automatically calculated and logged carbon emissions data, generating reports aligned with government and industry sustainability standards
- User Training: Facility operators and energy managers were trained to effectively use the system, interpret data insights, and implement energy-saving measures
Results
The company achieved substantial improvements in both energy efficiency and operational performance:
- Centralized Real-Time Monitoring: Enabled real-time tracking of energy usage across all stores and warehouses, improving operational oversight
- Consolidated Energy Data: Streamlined billing and energy procurement processes, reducing discrepancies by 15% and data processing time by 40%
- Proactive Energy Savings: Actionable insights led to a reduction in overall energy costs through optimized HVAC and lighting