Pilot Jülich:

Saving money by monitoring energy consumption

Saving money is very often on the top of our minds. Yet, when planning the construction or the renovation of a building, the most important feature to be able to drop costs on a daily basis is forgotten: the energy monitoring system.

We are talking about a quite simple system of plugs connected to big electric devices, like a fridge, or smaller equipment, like a computer. These plugs are made to register how much the devices are consuming in terms of energy.

Blockchain4prosumers economic evaluation pilot Jülich FHAachen

The monitoring of the devices generates data that is gathered on the open-source platform Grafana in order to be able to make the economic evaluation: which devices are consuming the most?

This monitoring system has two major advantages: the first one is that it offers the possibility to know how much you are spending in terms of electricity and eventually turn down some devices that are not used at the moment. The second one is the possibility to evaluate the year consumption and make a prediction of how much energy we will need into the future, during the same period of time.

Blockchain4prosumers floor monitoring pilot Jülich FHAachen

The developers in Jülich put in place a system of plugs covering the monitoring of the electric and gas consumption of two floors on campus. On this image you can observe red areas, consuming the most of energy, and green areas, consuming less.

The prediction is also an essential element in energy trading. By knowing how much energy you will need, you can also evaluate if you will be able to cover that energy necessity with your own sources of green energy or if you will have a shortage. In case of a shortage, you will be able to ask a prosumer to furnish you extra energy.

The pilot in Jülich is therefore not only monitoring the consumption but also going the extra mile by setting real energy trading’s simulation. The developers even implemented a system to simulate the trading on a marketplace running with a real time simulation. We were so lucky to be able to test it on an extremely excited group of students!

Blockchain4prosumers testing the energy trading blockchain pilot Jülich FHAachen

As the developers realised in their pilot, the monitoring is allowing to reduce the consumption of nearly 50% in some cases. The optimalisation of the costs can however only come with the analysis of the data received by the server. The server will only tell you what is consuming, it will still be the task of the final user to turn it down.

Nice to know fact: by installing an efficient energy monitoring system, you would even be able to spot an intruder or a thief! Let’s say, you are on a holiday, and you notice a peak of consumption. That wouldn’t be normal, so you can assume something is wrong and alert the authorities on time.