What is carbonTRACK?

carbonTRACK is an intelligent energy management platform that allows you to simply manage your energy. With agnostic products and a wide range of functionality, carbonTRACK takes care of energy variables, including monitoring, switching, fleet management, pre-real-time alerts, predictive management, and automation, to name just a few.

Who does carbonTRACK deliver solutions for?

• Councils
• Office spaces
• Retail
• Schools
• Industrial sites
• Residential properties
• Fast food
• Property
• Agriculture

What can carbonTRACK help councils with?

• Improve energy efficiency of council buildings and set higher standards for new developments and retrofits in their council area.
• Lead the charge on sustainability and become responsible corporate citizens and prove your emissions reduction success with strong data.
• Benchmark a site’s energy use and understand your potential for battery storage.
• Ensure public dollars are invested in solar and energy projects that deliver a fast, measurable return on investment.
• Maximize your solar investment through track electricity use patterns, controlling large devices, minimising standby power.

About the Council

The Council is a large local government in Australia, responsible for more than a million Queensland residents alone. The council covers an area of 1,300 square kilometres, providing various infrastructure facilities such as:

• public transport
• waste management
• community centres

The Council strives for a carbon neutral status, with commitment towards sustainability and renewables. It has PV totalling more than 200 kW across various sites

What was the primary driver in choosing to install carbonTRACK?

The Council has a significant portfolio of solar assets of varying sizes, varying hardware components and varying business cases across multiple locations. The council needed to reliably monitor the performance of PV Solar systems across 7 sites.

What were the project requirements?

• Ensure robust and reliable energy generation and usage data for both internal and external reporting
• Accurately report on the greenhouse gas emissions
• Rapid identification of faults and underperformance
• Meet the requirements of the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) for carbon neutral certification

The council identified carbonTRACK as the most appropriate solution to meet the council’s needs and has now mandated the inclusion of carbonTRACK on all their PV Solar installations.

What solutions were used and what were the results?

carbonTRACK Smart Hubs were installed across the 7 sites and the Council have a login to the carbonTRACK online Dashboard. Currently, solar aggregate data: grid AC, solar AC and inverter data is being monitored.

Two issues were picked up on installation – two sites had no solar generation or power connection and the landlord had not informed the Council of this issue. The Council can now view the performance of their solar systems at any time.

Phase two for the Council includes installing carbonTRACK solar monitoring for eight libraries throughout the city.

About the Social Housing Project

The apartment complex provides living space for people in the Guateng province of South Africa. The facility manager must ensure that every one of its 87 apartment units receives electricity and hot water when needed. The complex runs on pre-paid electricity, so precision in energy monitoring and management is pivotal to prevent an electrical shortage to its residence.

What was the primary driver in choosing to install carbonTRACK?

The apartment complex has a large demand from water heating. To reduce cost of electricity and meet its Green standards, the developer installed a solar system. They then needed to ensure the energy produced by this system is optimised, as generally residential usage times are outside of the solar day.

What were the project requirements?

• Meet Green Building Standards –aim of 50% of energy used for hot water production from renewable energy sources.
• De-risk the future cost of utilities & electricity for the developer through the management of their solar investment.
• Deliver a positive rate of return on their solar investment by providing a load shifting service: shift a small amount of electricity usage (approx. 1.7 kWh) per apartment (daily) so that more solar energy is consumed and less grid energy is consumed.
• Ensure the tenants are serviced, and happy – no loss to current living standard.

carbonTRACK was selected as a powerful and flexible energy management tool for the facility manager.

What solutions were used and what were the results?

carbonTRACK’s solar and solar thermal monitoring solution currently deployed across one site and the facility Management contractor has a login to the carbonTRACK online Dashboard. Currently, aggregate data: grid AC, solar AC, solar thermal and inverter data is being monitored.

carbonTRACK installed 50 units to monitor and manage the solar and hot water systems at the apartment complex. The carbonTRACK units are an enhanced energy monitoring system that remotely capture energy data of the solar panels and grid, as well as alerting for faults in the panels.

Impact so far

Early energy statistical results from the project show an improved optimisation of solar power usage.

Solar energy usage increased from 17% to 30% at the end of September, compared to pre-management baseline during July.

Through automated switching, carbonTRACK was able to shift 30% of geyser usage to daytime with load shifting.