Read our latest article by Caroline Beshay, our Key Account Manager, as she outlines how partnering with experts can save thousands.

How one of our key clients saved $164,000

This client story shows that it’s always worth keeping a close eye on your businesses energy consumption, and why a ‘deep dive’ by specialists can be worthwhile. 

Recent years have seen national logistics company Border Express undertake a program to reduce energy use and costs across its sites nationally. This has seen solar panels, LED lighting and electric vehicle chargers installed across their portfolio, with more to come in 2023.

This is business as usual for our energy consultants at Sustainable Energy Solutions and energy & carbon services company Ecovantage, but the Border Express Queensland site at Underwood presented a unique challenge.

In May 2022, Border Express approached their dedicated Account Manager Amy Rider-Featherstone at SES, about abnormally high energy usage at their new site. Border Express had already spent considerable amounts of money and time on contractors familiar to the site trying to identify the cause.

Amy provided advice and guidance to Border Express which included engaging Ecovantage. This made sense since Ecovantage had already established a good working relationship with Border Express having undertaken other work and projects at sites across Australia.

The Project

After spending time with the client on site and understanding the brief, it became apparent the site had several High Voltage supplies and had been subject to considerable expansions and reconfigurations by the previous tenants. Due to this and the lack of accurate single line diagrams, Ecovantage recommended extensive sub metering to identify the source of any unknown energy loads, and to reference check the accuracy of the site’s retail meters.

On site, Ecovantage specialists mapped the site’s circuits, creating an accurate high level single line diagram and installed 17 sub meters. These were set up, in place and interrogated for several months.

The Outcome

The results were compelling and clear. The submeters created a usage pattern identical to the site’s retail meter, but at much lower values. Ecovantage’s report was sent to the energy retailer and triggered a formal inhouse review of the sites metering calibration and topography. It was found that the sites check meter* was being read as a consumption meter – in essence double counting the energy consumed from one of the site’s two High Voltage supplies.

This resulted in a refund of $164,000 based on the usage over a single financial year. Retrospective claims may be pursued as well. 

Conclusion

This site presents a fantastic example of the benefits in quality energy management and the value of submetering. Ecovantage are proud to have one of only nine licenced Energy Management Systems (EnMS) Advisors in Australia leading their Energy & Carbon team, to ensure quality work and business cases are made by their clients as they head to a greener and financially stronger future.

This success story also highlights the benefits of partnering with energy consultants like Amy at SES who is an incredibly dedicated and client focused.

Great work Amy and the team at Ecovantage for an amazing outcome.

Let’s talk energy efficiency today

Discuss your energy needs today with our team by filling out our contact form or calling us on (02) 9371 4153.

*A check meter is when you have a retail meter on a load (such as a building) and one on the transformer supplying that building (the check meter). If they both read the same value, it proves the energy reading from the retail meter is correct and has been ‘checked’. In this case, both meters were being billed as retail meters.