RICHARDSON, Texas — EnTouch Controls, a provider of energy management as a service (EMaaS), has introduced its Advanced Peak Energy Management service, which builds on its EnTouch360°™ platform, to enable restaurant and retail facilities to reduce monthly energy spending by curtailing the amount of energy used during peak demand hours.

Because electric utilities adjust their electricity pricing based on demand, energy costs can quickly skyrocket up to 100 times the normal rate during a peak event. Peak demand occurs during the highest point of consumption, and often lasts for a half hour or more during the day. The timing of peak demand events is difficult to identify and can fluctuate throughout the week or month, especially during summer and winter months.

EnTouch’s Advanced Peak Energy Management service leverages the EnTouch360° demand response (DR) service, which provides a complete energy management system (EMS) with a full-time team of dedicated energy analysts to monitor and adjust the service as necessary and to work with the facilities team to prioritize alerts and preventative maintenance. The company said the EnTouch360° building control platform is OpenADR 2.0 certified, which makes it possible for restaurant and retail facilities to receive electrical rate information and participate in demand response and peak demand programs.

The service coordinates the operation of each HVAC system across all of a customer’s facilities and up to 10 percent of kilowatt-hours (kWh) can be reduced by using a non-aggressive peak energy management program without negatively affecting guest comfort in the facilities.

Using Advanced Peak Energy Management, EnTouch said restaurants and retailers can save up to 35 percent or more of kWh used during a peak demand event, saving facility managers thousands of dollars and improving the overall health of HVAC systems.

With the service, facility managers can rely on EnTouch’s energy experts to monitor demand response alerts from utilities and alert the facility manager when a peak demand event is going to occur. Facility managers can then decide whether to have the EnTouch team cease or reduce the energy usage of HVAC systems via their EnTouch360° cloud-based energy management system.

“Paying for electricity during a peak demand event is significantly impacting to a facility’s monthly energy expenses, but facility managers often do not have necessary data about peak demand events nor the appropriate time to react,” said Ifty Hasan, chief technology officer of EnTouch. “With our Advanced Peak Energy Management solution, facility managers can rely on the EnTouch team and our technology to help make that decision, with no commitments and very little action required on their part.”

More information is available here.

Publication date: 8/4/2015

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