Optimize your power consumption through peak shaving

Electricity costs are an ever-increasing cost factor for many companies. However, there is a relatively high savings potential for many of them - peak shaving.

Optimize your power consumption through peak shaving

Electricity costs are an ever-increasing cost factor for many companies. However, there is a relatively high savings potential for many of them - peak shaving.

If you’re a manufacturer, your power consumption spikes on power-up, driving up your electricity bill because your power grid operator charges you for your maximum peak load - i.e. the highest level of your demand, however short-term - which also increases the costs based on your average usage. But of course you want to keep your electricity costs under control. How can you do it?

There are two options. One, you demand less power from the utility, but that’s not an attractive option, to put it mildly: throttling back production might result in lower income. So you consider the alternative, which is to connect a power source such as an in-house battery storage system when your electricity demand rises sharply and a peak load occurs - that way, you can compensate for the fluctuation. This second option is referred to as peak shaving.

When relying on peak shaving, both the party that consumes electricity and the one that supplies it benefit: it has considerable savings potential for the former and ensures a stable grid for the latter. The graph below shows how peak shaving works.

In this example, there is a sharp rise in electricity consumption in the late morning, but with the help of intelligent load management, it is possible to cap the power drawn from the grid at a certain level by providing the additional power during this period from an in-house battery storage system. This setup allows you to maximize efficiency when drawing grid power because peak loads are completely buffered by the battery and no longer drive up your grid usage charges. The battery storage is then recharged during a phase of low electricity demand.

With battery storage, you can smooth load peaks and save money on grid rates, but whether it really pays off depends on the load profile of your system, which tells you all about the efficiency and reliability of power transmission. To assess it, you need to know your annual connected load - this information is usually provided by your supplier upon request - and the demand rate. Alternatively, you can also collect the data yourself by installing a BEAAM, which connects all your energy devices. With its help you can monitor and analyze the relevant time period.

Once you have installed the battery storage with intelligent load management, you don’t have to worry about anything else. The load management system detects when consumption threatens to exceed the threshold you have defined and automatically switches on the battery storage.