What is Energy Tracking?

Definition

Energy tracking is the process of collecting electricity data in real time for optimization purposes.

Why it Matters

In the early days of energy tracking, the only options available to owners and operators of real estate were expensive devices or “smart meters” that collected electricity data for the whole building.

While useful for cases such as benchmarking and other regulatory requirements, capturing this “master meter” data turned out to not provide the level of granularity necessary to make day-to-day operational decisions.

More recently, companies have developed Internet of Things (IoT) devices capable of affordably capturing data at the equipment level. With this data, the same technology companies could begin building “insights libraries” or different algorithms used to identify inefficiencies and recommend specific actions.

As capabilities advanced, energy tracking allowed these algorithms to detect more than energy inefficiencies. Now, this energy tracking is being used to predict equipment failures and help with other maintenance requirements.