Creating a Big Energy Data Strategy for Your Business: Part 1

There’s no shortage of industry buzz around leveraging Big Energy Data to reduce energy usage, costs, and track ROI on projects and investments. A search on Google for “Big Energy Data“ produces more than 55,000 results.

Due to many advances in technology and utility infrastructure, collecting and analyzing energy data has greater value for energy managers than ever before. Energy data today contains information from utilities that includes tariffs, usages, payments, AMI data from interval meters, weather data, and carbon and emissions. Energy managers are able to combine this with operational stats like square footage, occupancy rates, revenue and sales, etc., to gain tremendous insights that can help them reduce costs make investments that can maximize returns to your organization.

So, how can you start to use this very valuable resource to directly benefit your business? According to Verdantix, key challenges that organizations face is the overwhelming “volume, velocity, and variety” of this data (hence the “Big” in Big Energy Data), the significant technology upgrades that are required to collect and process this information, and the limited internal expertise to analyze and make sense of the data.

“Traditionally firms have stored energy data within siloed repositories linked to specific software packages that allows users to access, process and analyze the data. As firms move towards centralizing data and managing energy at the enterprise level, they have an opportunity to do deeper levels of data analytics.” – Verdantix (Urjanet Unravels Utility Billing With Big Energy Data Service)

In this blog series, I will discuss some of the key strategic and technological requirements to consider for streamlining the collection, delivery, storage and use of energy data and how your organization can implement a Big Energy Data plan to maximize potential benefit to your business. Ultimately, the quality of the data drives quality of the analysis and hence any potential outcomes. Mastering this whole process is the foundation of any Big Energy Data strategy.

To learn more about how Urjanet’s Utility Data Platform empowers energy managers, check out part 2 of this series.

Related Resources:

• Turning Utility Data Into a Strategic Advantage for CEOs and COOs
• How UPS Uses Big Data to Dial Down Energy Costs
• Utility Data Laggard or Leader: Which One Are You?

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