Energy service: keeping losses down after the contract
An energy service company invests its own money in reducing losses, and the client pays back from part of the savings over the following years. So the savings have to hold for all those years, not just the first.
What does a contract usually include?
- a pre-project survey of the network;
- replacing street lighting with LED;
- installing modern meters;
- collecting data into an AMI system.
In the first year this gives a visible result: during the survey and installation the network diagram is put in order and most sources of non-technical losses are removed.
Why do losses come back?
Within a year or two the network diagram changes, unmetered consumption appears, and the nature and size of loads change. Losses gradually grow back to their former level. Repeat surveys are laborious and are usually not part of the contract price.
What does an energy service company need?
AMI shows only the imbalance. Controlling the network over the whole contract term needs more:
- where unmetered consumption is connected — the address and an energy estimate;
- which consumers have been switched to another substation;
- what technical losses should be and how loaded the network sections are.
How does GRID-IN provide it?
- a digital network diagram — in the editor on a map, with section conductors and cables;
- a network calculation — technical losses, loading and voltages for every section;
- a target list — new irregularities on every new period of data;
- metering control — meters of another substation, diagram and record mismatches;
- field outcomes — how many targets were confirmed, the basis for reporting to the client.
The data comes from the same AMI installed under the contract; no repeated survey of the whole network is needed. More — Low-voltage network monitoring from smart meter data.