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DID YOU KNOW THAT SMART POWER OFFERS...
Power Factor Analysis and Reporting
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Smart Power offers a power factor analysis service that identifies areas of poor power factor.
Power factor is the ratio of real power flowing to the load, to the apparent power in the circuit, and is measured on a scale of zero to one. Our analysis identifies the minimum requirements needed to return power factor to 0.95.
Improving power factor is a must as many lines companies now have a penalty for sites with poor power factor below 0.95. This penalty can be up to 10 times the normal demand costs per unit of demand (KVA).
We can improve your power factor by sourcing the required equipment and arranging project implementation from start to finish.
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SMART POWER SAVING TIPS:
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We all want to save power in our home as well as our businesses. Here are three top tips to help you keep your bills low.
In this newsletter we focus on Standby Power and PC Usage.
1) TURN OFF STANDBY
Did you know, the average household spends around 10% of a house's total electricity consumption keeping household electronic devices on standby? This could be TVs, DVD players, PC's, audio systems, games consoles, printers etc. Obviously if you have scheduled programmes recording on your PVR or Sky box, you will need to leave these on, but for the others, flick the switch!
2) CHECK POWER SAVING SETTINGS ON YOUR COMPUTERS
Most computers will have energy saving options which is a great way to reduce power consumption.
Don't bother with screensavers, just set your monitor to go standby after 10 minutes of inactivity.
Also, dig down into the power options and you can tell individual components to switch off when they're not being used such as hard drives and add-in cards.
3) TURN ROUTERS TO STANDBY
Internet routers will need to be turned on when you're at home during the day, however there's no real reason for these to be on when you're asleep, and some routers offer a power schedule which you can programme to turn off and on at specific times.
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Greetings!
Welcome to this edition of Get Smart, Smart Power's regular bulletin. Get Smart provides a round-up of energy news and views from Australia, New Zealand and around the world.
In Company Voice this month, director Glenn Johnston talks about our Smart Alert service, which is proving to be very beneficial to companies who need to analyse data from large numbers of Smart Meters.
As always, your feedback is most welcome. |
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AUSTRALIAN ENERGY HEADLINES
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Australian Households Pay Different Amounts To Access National Electricity Network
Australian households are paying far more than people in comparable countries in electricity network charges, with huge discrepancies across different states a new report has found... Read more
Engineers Warn Regulator Cuts could Jeopardise Electricity Supply, Bushfire Safety
Electricity price cuts proposed by the regulator could compromise Canberra's power supply, lead to thousands of job losses and pose "catastrophic" safety risks to NSW and ACT residents if they were ... Read more
NSW Government Underspent Family Energy Rebate by $22 Million Despite High Electricity Prices
Despite record high electricity prices and disconnection rates the state government has underspent by more than $22 million, a key rebate aimed at cushioning the impact of soaring power bills on NSW families.
The revelation has prompted the state's peak welfare agency to call for a review of the rebate system as millions of dollars in ... Read more
Australia Uses the Motion of the Ocean to Generate Zero-Emission Electricity and Desalinate Water Simultaneously
It's not the size of the buoy that counts. It's the motion in the ocean. Actually, both are pretty important. At least, they are when it comes to Australia's new CETO 5 system: "The first array of wave power generators to be connected to an electricity grid in Australia and worldwide" ... As of February 18, that system has been channelling clean, efficient, zero-emission energy into Australia's power grid, providing electricity to the country's largest naval base ... Read more
New South Wales Seen as Next Electricity Retailing Battleground
New South Wales is shaping up to be the next battleground in electricity retailing, with several second-tier retailers poised to ramp up their presence and try to erode the dominance of the big three players - Origin Energy, AGL Energy and EnergyAustralia - should Premier Mike Baird win this month's election ... Read more
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NEW ZEALAND ENERGY HEADLINES
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Record Number of New Entrant Retailers in Electricity Market
A record seven new electricity retailers have entered the retail electricity market since January 2014, more than in any previous year... Read more
Consumers Switch on to Electricity Game
Sparks are flying in the electricity market, with a start-up power company offering Auckland customers access to wholesale prices for the first time... Read more
Is Solar Power Worth it?
Consumers are warned to do their sums carefully before investing in solar power, but - for some - it might be beneficial. Kiwis bask in about 2000 hours of bright sunshine every year, but despite seeing the sun nearly 25 per cent of the time, the economics of powering a home with solar panels is cloudy ... Read more
New Meters Take Axe to Power Bills
Power bills for a Blenheim family have nearly halved since a 'smart' meter was installed last year. Marlborough Lines commercial manager Katherine Hume-Pike said the use of the automatic power readers were increasing in the region ... Read more
Electricity Lines Tariff Reduction Announced Wellington Electricity Lines Ltd, the electricity lines company for the Wellington region, has confirmed a reduction in their line charges that will take effect from 1 April 2015. For Wellington business and residential consumers, this will mean the electricity line charge portion of their tariff which is around 30-40% of the total bill, will reduce by .... Read more
Wellington Electricity Converts to Hybrid
Wellington Electricity will convert it's fleet to plug in hybrid electric vehicles next year and plans to install fast charging stations in the capital. The distribution company has been trialling electric vehicles and charging options this year. Chief Executive Greg Skelton says the fleet of about 10 vehicles will be upgraded to the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV model next year.
Source Trust Power Monthly Market Report
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INTERNATIONAL ENERGY HEADLINES
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IBM Adopts Israeli Solution to Save 'Lost' Electricity
Apple Clinches $850m Deal with First Solar for Renewable Energy
Apple Inc, Is investing $848 million in a solar farm to harvest electricity in a partnership with First Solar Inc... Read more
Turning Carbon Dioxide into Rock... and Burying It.
In a test that began in 2012, scientists injected hundreds of tons of water and carbon dioxide gas 1500 feet down into layers of Iceland's porous basaltic rock... Read more
The Caviar Like Capsules that Could be the Answer to Curbing Carbon Emissions
'They look like salmon roe' John Vericella, an engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Quartz. He helped create the small silicon beads that, when installed inside a power plant smokestack, will suck CO2 gas out at an incredible speed. So what happens when the beads are dumped into a glass of Sprite? ... Read more
There's No Proof That Daylight Saving Time Saves Electricity, So Why Do We Bother?
If you're looking for someone to blame for daylight saving time, allow us to suggest the Germans.
After all it was Germany which, in April, 1916, first started moving clocks forward by an hour, to conserve energy during World War I. The rest of Europe followed, as did the US, in 1918 ... Read more
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THE COMPANY VOICE
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Director Glenn Johnston is responsible for technical work streams within Smart Power including energy auditing, risk analysis and energy tenders.
Glenn started in the electricity industry in 1993 with the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand (ECNZ) where he was involved in assisting customers to identify and implement energy saving initiatives. After the break up of ECNZ into smaller entities, Glenn went to Genesis Energy as an account manager working with customers to supply their energy needs. Glenn joined Smart Power in 2003 from Transpower where he gained a strong knowledge of electricity supply and network pricing. This month he talks about Smart Alert.
Smart Alert for Smart Meter Data
With the increased introduction of smart meters there is an opportunity to look for energy waste and efficiency in greater detail for sites that normal have monthly or two monthly meter reads.
However if you have lots of sites then looking at all the data could be very time consuming.
Smart Power has developed a tool called Smart Alert to refine the number of sites to be investigated to only those that are showing an issue.
Smart Power's Smart Alert service provides exception reporting on energy consumption. If energy use differs from what we expect, an alert is raised for further investigation.
Smart Alert is a service designed specifically for portfolios with a large number of Smart Meters. Before we complete Half-Hourly Profiling of these sites, we run the data through our purpose built Smart Alert Database to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. From this:
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Large volumes of data are quickly analysed
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Unusual consumption is identified, identifying the sites that warrant a more detailed analysis
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We can limit the cost of Half-Hourly Profiling to those sites most in need
What will Smart Alert Check?
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Compare monthly consumption against the previous month, and against the same month the previous year.
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Alert if any week within the month has significantly different consumption from other weeks
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Alert if weekend use is outside expected boundaries
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Alert if public holiday (or other expected low consumption days) is outside expected boundaries
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Alert if night load is outside expected boundaries
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Alert if start and end times for operating hours are outside pre-set boundaries.
We can then either provide you with the identified sites to investigate further, or we can look further into the data for you.
For more information contact your Smart Power Account Manager.
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This newsletter was provided by:
Smart Power Utilities
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