Beyond energy management: How carbonTRACK helps businesses optimise their performance

Whether you run a corner store or manage a retail chain with thousands of shops nation-wide, carbonTRACK can help you do more with less expense and effort.

carbonTRACK’s technology provides businesses with the insights and tools they need to maximise not only their energy effectiveness, but also their overall performance and profitability.

In recent years, carbonTRACK has gained a strong reputation as Australia’s home energy management system of choice. Our robust hardware and sophisticated software allow homeowners to take control of energy usage in ways hitherto impossible.

While there is certainly ample opportunity to ‘tighten up’ the energy usage of the typical home, there is an even greater number of ways in which carbonTRACK can help to improve and streamline operations for businesses. Our successes accordingly extend beyond homes and into the commercial sphere as well.

carbonTRACK’s measurement, monitoring and control capabilities

There are three facets to carbonTRACK’s technology that make it an ideal solution for virtually all commercial and industrial premises: Measurement, monitoring and control.

Measurement

As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. carbonTRACK’s hardware provides measurements across a range of parameters through a variety of sensor types. These include:

• Electricity consumption – electricity being one of the biggest operational expenses for most businesses, measuring consumption is a crucial step towards more effective electricity usage
• Electricity production – rooftop solar panels and on-site cogeneration facilities are becoming increasingly common for businesses everywhere; getting the most out of them requires a way to understand their production in real-time
• Temperature – for refrigeration of goods in accordance with regulations, or office/storefront HVAC for comfort & ambiance, among countless other uses
• Lighting levels – for visual comfort in working environments of all types
• Humidity levels – for comfort as well as for storing dry goods or operating electronics and other humidity-sensitive equipment
• Water flow – for applications including irrigation on farms and water use efficiency in offices
• Gas flow – for businesses that use gas for heating, cooking or powering machinery
• Vibrations – for keeping track of the performance, efficiency and age of machinery
• Leak detection – for gas, water and other fluids to alleviate inefficiencies & losses or to prevent corrosion
• Pulse sensors – ‘catch all’ sensors that enable tracking of any type of individual action, such as the opening of a door or refilling of a coffee grinder, thereby unlocking insights into employee and customer behaviour

Monitoring

Monitoring is the interface through which the user can gain a more holistic understanding of measurements which – on their own – may not be as useful. With all of the measurements accessible via a single interface (app or web portal), managers are able to see the ‘big picture’, knowing at a glance whether their business is running as well as it should be – or as it could be – at any given moment or historically, over a given period of time (such as financial year or quarter).

Sophisticated monitoring software will deliver not only a variety of measurements at a single access point (e.g. an app or web portal), but may also provide proactive notifications, alerts or suggestions about opportunities to make improvements. Furthermore, detailed analytics functionality will also allow a business to meaningfully investigate conjectures and assumptions across multiple measurement parameters – such as the potential impact of opening a freezer door multiple times per day on electricity bill costs.

Examples of the types of insights that can be gleaned through comprehensive monitoring include:

• Compliance with standards & regulations – virtually all businesses have standards and regulations to which they must adhere; comprehensive monitoring of a range of relevant measurements allows users to understand at a glance whether these requirements are being met – instead of following a ‘paper trail’ of logs kept manually by employees
• Performance towards self-prescribed goals & targets – in addition to minimum legal requirements, most organisations also strive for continuous improvements for their own growth, profitability and employee morale
• Consistency across time and location – for many consumer-facing organisations such as retail chains, creating and recreating an environment is key to the customer experience, from day to day, season to season and location to location
• Identification of opportunities to improve efficiencies – by replacing inefficient or aging equipment, or by implementing behaviour change strategies targeting employees or customers
• Suitability of on-site generation – such as cogeneration plants, rooftop solar, or battery storage

Control

Control is the third aspect of carbonTRACK’s technological approach to operations management for businesses. On the hardware side, carbonTRACK’s hubs and smart meters can be set up to control almost as many devices as they can monitor, providing the means for business managers to act directly on insights gained through their portal.

Control may take the form of ‘light touch’ performance adjustments (e.g. raising or lowering a thermostat), or the ability to switch devices on and off (such as lights or televisions) remotely or automatically. In terms of influencing employee or management team behaviour, ‘control’ may involve the delivery of a notification when certain parameters have been met (e.g. when daily electricity consumption looks to go above an average or above a predetermined level).

carbonTRACK for businesses small, medium and large

carbonTRACK’s versatile and sophisticated approach means that our technology can assist businesses of all sizes across virtually every industry. For smaller businesses, carbonTRACK delivers valuable insights as well as the means to act on them, while for larger commercial entities our technology enables collection of fleet-wide ‘big data’ to integrate into building management systems – for better, more granular and more consistent understanding and control across multiple premises.

carbonTRACK for small to medium enterprises (SMEs)

For owners and managers of businesses with locations at a small number of sites (such as cafes, corner shops or automotive garages), carbonTRACK is an extremely cost-effective monitoring and management solution for a wide range of everyday operations – especially (but not limited to) electricity and energy efficiency.

For an SME, installation of a single carbonTRACK unit plus associated measurement and control equipment (e.g. temperature monitors and smart plugs) is fast and easy.

Once carbonTRACK is installed and commissioned, it is immediately possible to access consumption data and implement controls digitally from anywhere with an internet connection via carbonTRACK’s own web portal and software.

carbonTRACK for large businesses & corporations

For larger organisations with multiple locations (such as restaurant chains or clothing stores), carbonTRACK’s hardware integrates with existing building management systems to provide fleet-wide measurement and control functionality.

carbonTRACK works closely with large corporate clients and their energy management consultants to deliver custom-built solutions across a range of industries. Check out some case studies below.

Take a look at our partners who can provide your commercial solutions with carbonTRACK.