Integrated Industrial Energy Control
Smart Control. Stable Operations. Cheaper Energy.
A wastewater treatment plant with flexible load, whether that flexibility comes from pump scheduling, blower control, or biogas cogeneration, sits under three separate sources of cost signal at once. The wholesale price changes every five minutes. The retail tariff sets rates by time of day. A maximum demand charge is set by a handful of peak intervals each month. Integrated Industrial Energy Control reads all three, weighs them against what the plant can safely do, and directs the plant’s flexible assets, grid electricity and biogas generation together, to the lowest cost outcome available at each point in time.
This is not two separate services bolted together. The same plant model, the same process constraints, and the same underlying simulation engine sit behind both wholesale market response and tariff or demand charge management. Which signal matters most depends on the site, and often more than one applies at once.
Where to start
- I want to understand the fundamentals. Start with Demand Response Explained, with The NEM Explained and Electricity Tariffs Explained as background on how the market and your bill actually work.
- I want to know if wholesale market flexibility applies to my site. See Wholesale Market Flexibility and the Questions Water Utilities Ask.
- I want to reduce my demand charge or evaluate a retail offer. See Tariff and Demand Charge Optimisation.
- I want a quantified answer for my site. Read How We Work to see the process from plant assessment through to implementation and ongoing monitoring.
What is on this site
- Wholesale Market Flexibility: shifting load to take advantage of the five minute wholesale price.
- Tariff and Demand Charge Optimisation: reducing cost through retail tariff structure and maximum demand management, independent of wholesale volatility.
- Demand Response Explainers: the explainers in one place, in reading order, from market mechanics through to plant operation.
- How We Work: the delivery process, from feasibility study through implementation to ongoing monitoring.
- Questions Water Utilities Ask: answers to the questions that come up before committing to a study or implementation.
Is this worth doing for your site?
Sites tend to be good candidates when they have flexible load that can shift in time, existing or planned on site generation or storage, and a large enough electricity spend that a modest percentage saving is material in dollar terms. The physical flexibility is usually not the hard part. What is missing is a quantified answer to what that flexibility is actually worth, against wholesale price volatility, tariff structure, or demand charges, which is what a feasibility study provides.
You can see what one of these simulations looks like, a replay of a full year of a wastewater treatment plant responding to real wholesale prices.
Where to from here
If your question is not answered on the site, the fastest way to get a specific answer is to start with a plant assessment, which is also the first step of the feasibility study itself.