EDITORIAL

Increase Your Energy Efficiency and Reduct Your Energy costs Through Robust Electricity Metering, Monitoring and Management

I have been writing a lot recently about electricity deregulation and the need to enhance customer metering, monitoring and management of electricity. The fact is that electricity deregulation is bringing higher electricity prices. Because of this, the pressure to lower energy costs, increase productivity and profitability, improve system reliability, ensure power quality and reduce maintenance costs has increased the need for on-line, real-time electricity metering, monitoring and management.

Electricity is a necessary expense for all companies. Whether you operate a foundry, steel mill, petrochemical company, hospital or grocery store, you can't run your business without electricity. But what do you do when electricity costs go up? Are your customers willing to pay ten to fifteen percent more for your product? Clearly not. The solution is to manage your electricity costs.

Failure to properly meter, monitor and manage electricity can significantly impact the bottom line of any organization. Electrical engineering and maintenance personnel have long been interested in metering and monitoring electrical systems to help them take advantage of better management techniques.

The need to understand and implement electricity management techniques has received a great deal of attention in recent years because of three major factors:

• Increasing pressure to reduce operational costs.
  Since electricity costs are a significant portion of most facilities' costs, scrutiny is greater than ever.
• More complex utility rate structures and price fluctuations in the electricity marketplace resulting from utility deregulation.
• Increasing attention to power quality and reliability issues at all levels of facilities.

As well, getting the best price for electricity means knowing not only how much energy a facility consumes, but precisely when that energy is used and what equipment is using it - allowing for the development of load shifting and peak-load shaving strategies. Having this information will also help personnel negotiate favourable terms with utilities or electricity retailers.

To address these critical issues, The Canadian Electricity Forum is organizing three important Canadian forums titled: "Electricity Metering, Monitoring and Management: How To Increase Electricity Efficiency and Reduce Costs".;

These forums, are planned for this Fall in:
    Toronto, Oct 1-2, 2001
    Edmonton, Oct 2-3, 2001
    Vancouver, Oct 4-5, 2001

At these forums, we are going to introduce power consumers to cutting edge hardware and software technologies and techniques available.

These forums will bring together representatives from electric utilities and large electricity consumers, Measurement Canada, metering manufacturers and software providers in an effort to show how a robust electricity metering and monitoring system can reduce electricity costs for large electricity consuming companies, increase plant efficiency and productivity, and reduce overall utility system demand. A robust electricity metering and monitoring system can also be helpful for tracking historical use trends and curbing electricity demand based on predetermined load-shedding criteria.

Delegates will have an excellent opportunity to ask specific questions and exchange ideas relating to their own unique situations. These forums are designed to be an interactive, problem-solving, learning environment for delegates of all disciplines.

Companies involved in these forums include: Power Measurement Limited, E2MS Inc. (PML Partner), Measurement Canada, Response Power Inc., Toronto Hydro Energy Services Inc., AltaSteel Ltd., Willis Energy, University of British Columbia (Utilities), B.C. Hydro, and Siemens Canada.

For detailed program content for our MM&M forums, link to www.electricityforum.com/forums.htm

Hope to see you at one of these forums.

Randy Hurst
Publisher
rwh@istar.ca