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Energy Consumption Analysis
Where does the energy go? A bill total never answers that — only measurement that says which feeder, which hour, which department. What you cannot see, you cannot manage.
Three things the bill never tells you
The total that arrives at month end hides three critical facts:
Invisible consumption. A bill total says nothing about which feeder or which hour the energy went to. A site that knows its total but not its breakdown can only talk about saving energy at the level of “everyone please be careful”.
Out-of-hours load. The load that carries on when production stops is consumption’s silent share: machines idling, lighting nobody switched off, ventilation running through the weekend. Until it is measured, nobody can guess its size — and those who guess always guess low.
Reactive consumption. Poor power factor is a bill for energy you never used. By the time reactive charges show up on the statement, the month is already lost.
The whole period, in four numbers
Total Consumption
763,914
kWh · ↓ 0.6% vs previous period
Estimated Cost
£190,978
avg. delivered price: £250/MWh
Carbon Footprint
158,130
kg CO₂e · ↓ 0.6%
Out-of-hours Load
15.4%
113,224 kWh · outside operating hours
Consumption, cost and carbon are calculated together, for the same period — you never add up three numbers from three separate reports. Cost comes from half-hourly consumption multiplied by that half-hour’s actual price; it is not an approximation against an average rate.
The fourth card is the most valuable number on this page: out-of-hours load at 15.4%. Roughly a sixth of this site’s annual bill is spent while nothing is being produced. Before it was measured, it was on nobody’s agenda.
Which feeder does the energy go to?
You cannot hunt savings in a total. The first breakdown sits at transformer and main-distribution level:
Consumption Breakdown
SelectedBy systemBy area- Substation TX-4 %28,8 219,607 kWh
- Substation TX-3 %26,4 201,673 kWh
- Substation TX-2 %24,3 185,631 kWh
- Substation TX-1 %20,5 156,602 kWh
The same screen switches to a system view (lighting, compressed air, cooling…) and an area view (production line, warehouse, offices…). The question keeps descending until it is no longer “why is TX-4 high” but “which load under TX-4 is high”.
Which hour does the energy go to?
Consumption Heatmap
HourlyDailyThe heatmap’s job is not to look pretty but to betray irregularity: a bright block in the middle of a weekend, a high band running past midnight, a working-day pattern on a bank holiday. Every one of these disappears in a bill and shouts on a map.
When the days are stacked
Seven days of the same week are overlaid on one axis. If the operation is regular, the profiles coincide; the one day that diverges is instantly visible.
Consumption Profiles
Weekly viewMonthly viewThe finding profile-stacking catches most often is not the peak but the base: the line that never drops overnight is the sum of loads nobody switches off. In the example above that base is 265 kW — roughly 2.3 million kWh of continuous load a year. Some of it is legitimate (cooling, servers), some of it is forgotten equipment; telling them apart starts with measurement.
Reactive: visible before it is charged
Two reactive quantities are watched continuously alongside consumption — because you need to hear about poor power factor before the excess-reactive units start accruing, not after they appear under DUoS on the statement:
Power Factor
0.97
reactive charges typically apply below 0.95
Excess Reactive Units
0
kvarh above the 33% threshold · this period
Both the power factor and the distance to the chargeable threshold stay visible. When that distance starts closing, a notification goes out and the power-factor correction equipment gets maintained before the charges begin. The full quality picture — harmonics, imbalance, voltage events — deepens in the Power Quality module.
What we measure, and from where
Measurement provenance
- Consumption
- kWh
- Main meter + substation and area analysers · minute-level
- Cost
- £
- Half-hourly consumption × that period’s actual price
- Carbon
- kg CO₂e
- GB grid carbon intensity · updated periodically
- Out-of-hours load
- kWh · %
- Derived · from hours outside the operating schedule
- Reactive
- kvarh
- Import and export separately · from the main meter
- Breakdown
- %
- Substation / system / area hierarchy
- Profiles
- kW
- Derived · days overlaid on one axis
The out-of-hours calculation rests on the site’s operating schedule — shifts, weekends and holidays are defined per site. At a site that works Saturdays, Saturday is not counted as “out of hours”; no one-size-fits-all assumption is used.
Frequently asked
We already have meters, and our supplier measures consumption. What is different?
The settlement meter measures for billing: one point, half-hourly, total. Managing energy needs the breakdown — which substation, which area, which hour. The main meter tells you whether the bill is right; the area analysers tell you where to look. They answer different questions.
Does the cost figure match the bill exactly?
The energy line comes out very close because it is calculated the same way: half-hourly consumption × the half-hourly price in your contract. Add network charges, levies and taxes and you get a full bill simulation — that is the job of the Bill Validation module. The 'estimated cost' here is a live in-period indicator; it shows where you are heading before the month closes.
Is reducing out-of-hours load realistic? Some things must run overnight.
Of course — cooling, server rooms, security lighting. The goal is not to zero the figure but to see inside it: once the legitimate loads are separated, what remains is usually equipment somebody forgot to switch off. At the sites we measure, that 'forgotten' share alone is worth several percentage points of saving, and it costs nothing to fix.
Which factor do you use for the carbon number?
The GB grid carbon intensity (kg CO₂e/kWh), and the screen states which year and source the factor comes from. If your corporate reporting requires a different factor (for example, supplier-specific), it can be changed per site. Full Scope 1-2-3 carbon accounting is on the way as a separate module.
Are the numbers on screen real?
The period KPIs and the substation split come from a working site; the heatmap and day profiles are drawn with sample series that reproduce that site's pattern — publishing a site's actual day-by-day profile would expose its production schedule.
Let us measure what is happening on your site.
In a one-hour call we look at your existing setup and set out exactly which measurement points are needed and what you would be able to see.