Information about weather and levels of business activity
In a nutshell, the amount of energy or water consumed by your plant, systems, processes, buildings or vehicles, is dependent on how much work they were called upon to do. It is not possible to monitor their performance in any kind of meaningful way without reference to an appropriate 'determining factor', such as one of the following:
It is up to you to decide what are the most appropriate factors for your particular circumstances. Ideally, you should share data which is already being gathered for other purposes such as job costing; otherwise you may have to invent your own measures of activity or demand. The figures you collect must be collected at the same frequency as your meter readings, or more frequently. If you have weekly meter readings, your production and degree-day statistics should be weekly, or they could be daily or even hourly; monthly figures would not suffice.=============================================== Application Determining factor ----------------------------------------------- Energy-intensive Product tonnage continuous process ----------------------------------------------- Resource-intensive Piece count (?) batch process ----------------------------------------------- Road haulage Tonne-miles ----------------------------------------------- Space heating Heating degree days ----------------------------------------------- Air conditioning Cooling degree days ----------------------------------------------- Water in swimming Number of bathers pool ================================================
Elements of the utility management process
Top-level objectives
Collecting weather data