Energy and Demand Management

The next generation of lighting control is data-driven—in other words, using granular information about energy usage, timing, and pricing to make further energy-saving adjustments.

Utilities offer a range of programs aimed towards reducing demand at peak periods—but only buildings with the right set of granular data and real-time control tools can take part. The most popular program of this type is called Demand Response or Load Shedding: the ability for a utility to directly offer their customers large incentives for reducing energy demand at peak times. By putting energy monitoring tools and usage data in the hands of facility managers, they can communicate with utilities and take advantage of greater cost savings offered by these programs.

In addition, energy management software provides the ability to view behavior and change strategies over time, as well as monitoring to help verify savings. Current usage can be tracked against usage history or target goals in order to accurately measure energy savings and justify project costs. 

Daintree's energy monitoring and demand management solutions 

Daintree-based wireless lighting control solutions provide an easy-to-read, real-time graphical summary of real-time, historical, and granular lighting energy usage data. This highlights areas that require attention and allows the user to drill down to the zone and individual device level or generate reports for more detailed information.

By logging all lighting activity and energy use, Daintree is capturing valuable data that can be used to make better decisions, measure and verify savings, and drive new demand-based programs. Because Daintree’s user application is available online and remotely, facility managers can choose to share and communicate this data as appropriate with utilities or others.

As facility managers generate more data, they use that data to improve system performance and set up new rules based on individual performance. For example, if the data shows that one office has a tendency to override dimming controls more frequently than other offices, the light level in that office can be set to default to higher.

Immediate and system-wide control also opens the opportunity for users to take advantage of utility demand management programs such as demand response and load shedding. As demand signals are communicated, Daintree-based systems can manually or automatically be set to reduce the load to a preset level or by a set percentage.