by Chris Hargreaves | Aug 15, 2023 | News, Sustainable Business
In the battle against climate change, many businesses are proving that even the tiniest actions can yield colossal results when multiplied by collective action.
From small startups to corporate giants, an array of industries are embracing an arsenal of unassuming tactics which, when combined, pack a serious carbon-reducing punch.
As renowned American historian and social activist Howard Zinn put it:
“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
Reducing your business’ carbon footprint means taking control of your environmental impact and responsibilities, whilst also discovering hidden inefficiences and cost saving gains you never knew existed.
At Total Utilities, we’re here to support your carbon reduction and energy efficiency efforts, regardless of scale.
So, let’s take a quick glimpse into the world of small changes that can create monumental impact:
Energy efficiency: implementing energy-saving practices like using LED lighting, upgrading to energy efficient appliances, and optimising heating and cooling systems can often lead to immediate energy savings and reduced carbon emissions. Total Utilities has particular expertise in this area and can gather comprehensive insights into where you use energy. We can then analyse data to identify savings opportunities that reduce environmental impact.
Waste reduction and recycling: Establishing comprehensive waste management strategies that include recycling, composting, and minimising waste generation will divert waste from landfills and incineration. Businesses can significantly decrease their carbon footprint by making relatively small changes.
Supply chain optimisation: Collaborating with suppliers who prioritise sustainability, source locally where possible, and streamlining transportation routes helps create a green supply chain that can contribute to carbon reduction across the business ecosystem.
Telecommuting and flexible work: Encouraging remote work and flexible scheduling options for employees reduces the need for daily commutes. This not only cuts down on carbon emissions, but also boosts employee morale and productivity.
Employee awareness and engagement: Educating employees on carbon reduction best practices, such as turning lights off and equipment when not in use, minimising paper usage, recycling, and using reusable containers. Employee involvement fosters a culture of sustainability and collective action.
Total Utilities can advise on all of these carbon saving actions and much more! By focusing on small changes such as these, businesses can achieve substantial progress in carbon footprint reduction without a major upheaval in operations. Additionally, these changes can yield long-term cost savings for your business.
In the arena of carbon reduction, it’s often the little things that make the biggest impact. Substantial carbon reduction doesn’t hinge solely on grand gestures, but relies on the resolve of every business to play its part in emissions reduction and efficiency improvement – all the while reaping the rewards of lowered energy costs.
So, why not get with the programme today and prepare for a new era of carbon reduction success with Total Utilities!
– Stay tuned for a game changing Total Utilities carbon management service, designed to effortlessly measure, reduce and disclose your carbon emissions.
– Contact us today to talk about measuring and reducing your business carbon footprint.
by Chris Hargreaves | Jul 26, 2023 | Carbon Neutral, News
From hazy data to mind-boggling calculations and sprawling spreadsheets – measuring your carbon footprint is a daunting task for many businesses. But fear not! Total Utilities is gearing up to help simplify and accelerate your carbon management journey.
In the coming weeks, we will be making an exciting announcement about how we intend to assist businesses to effortlessly measure, reduce and disclose their carbon emissions.
The carbon conundrum
We know that the task of measuring your carbon footprint can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to become tangled in the complexity of the carbon footprint web.
Total Utilities understands these obstacles and is dedicated to helping businesses overcome them while encouraging wider participation in carbon management programs.
Discover hidden cost saving gains
Carbon measurement is no walk in the park with challenges including lack of standardised methodologies for measurement, supply chain complexities, concerns over data reliability, financial constraints – or simply not knowing where to begin.
Our new carbon management service will help you take control of your environmental impact and responsibilities. Additionally, by viewing your business balance sheet through a carbon lens, we can help you discover hidden efficiency and cost saving gains that you never knew existed!
Take control of your environmental impact
In a world that increasingly demands environmental responsibility, the desire to reduce emissions is strong, but the process of measurement is currently a challenging hurdle.
By leveraging our utility management expertise with advanced AI technology and sophisticated software – we believe we are about to deliver something special to the market that will accelerate progress towards net zero.
Stay tuned and prepare to embark on a new era of carbon reduction success with Total Utilities!
by Chris Hargreaves | Jul 7, 2023 | Case Studies, solar power
Total Utilities partners with Kristin School to provide real-time monitoring of solar panel performance with our world-class energy monitoring solution.
- Measuring and analysing solar power to calculate return on investment (ROI).
- Tracking energy savings & identifying opportunities for improved solar performance.
- Providing educational opportunities for students with solar lab to monitor real-time generation.
- Helping Kristin School reduce reliance on grid and achieve sustainability goals.
Kristin powers its way to brighter, greener future
Kristin School in Auckland has been committed to sustainability for many years, with a target of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.
The school first began installing solar panels in 2019 as part of a sustainability initiative named ‘The Lightbox Project.’ Two years later, they called upon Total Utilities for a full solar review and to recommend a service provider for further solar installations to extend the solar project.
That done, the next step was to call upon our expertise to help them measure and quantify real-time solar generation and measure sustainability gains.
Using Centrica Business Solutions’ energy insights technology, Total Utilities was able to assist Kristin gain invaluable insights into solar power generation, whilst also providing amazing real-life learning opportunities for students with a solar monitoring lab.
Delivering competitive advantage with real time energy monitoring
- Total Utilities has an exclusive partnership with Centrica Business Solutions to deliver its Panoramic Power energy insights solution.
- Panoramic Power provides world-class energy visibility and intelligence using wireless sensor technology that transmits data from all energy-using equipment in real time to the Cloud.
- Our expert team analyses data to provide cutting edge energy insights and advice to deliver cost and energy savings for clients.
- Panoramic Power is quick to install, requires no maintenance and is a revolution in energy management.
Basking in solar
Working together with Total Utilities, Kristin School has gained important insights into the benefits of its solar investment:
- Increased sustainability. Total Utilities has been able to provide real-time insights into energy savings – a major step forward in helping the school measure its carbon footprint and achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral.
- Reduced power consumption. Energy insights provided by Total Utilities show exactly where and when solar energy is being generated, providing reassurance on return on investment.
- Carbon credits. Kristin can now accurately calculate excess solar generated, earning carbon credits to offset the school’s carbon emissions and generate revenue.
- Educational opportunities. The ‘Power Radar’ dashboard is an invaluable educational resource for students to learn about how solar energy can be used to power schools, businesses and homes.
Kristin School’s glowing report card for Total Utilities
Director of Business Services for Kristin School, Nigel Wilkinson said;
“The energy insight tools provided by Total Utilities have enabled us to measure solar power generated building by building, and the dashboard is so quick and easy to use with no training. Before it was installed, it was difficult to have confidence in exactly what was being generated and used.
As well as reassuring us about the ongoing viability of solar panels, the solar dashboard now enables me to confidently report back to the school board on our solar performance.
Additionally, the solar lab provided by Total Utilities is an excellent educational tool for students, allowing them to assess data and learn about renewable energy for projects and assignments.
All new buildings and upgrades now include solar panels. I can only see an increase in student and parent interest in renewable energy, and it’s important for us to be able to report on our commitment to reducing emissions and improving sustainability both now and in the future.”
A greener future for our children
Total Utilities energy insights and reporting capability allows Kristin School to determine exactly how energy is consumed and potentially wasted on campus.
This is an important step forward for schools such as Kristin who require an affordable, data-driven solution to reduce waste and carbon emissions in order to meet the government’s goal of NetZero emissions by 2050.
Armed with energy insights provided by Total Utilities, schools and businesses can accurately measure cost-savings and environmental benefits of solar.
Our energy insight services are ideal for any school or business wanting to reduce costs and carbon emissions, drive efficiency and ensure reliability of power.
With the clock ticking on a global environmental crisis, harnessing renewable solar energy is a great step forward to ensure a brighter, greener future for our children.
Keen for your business to enjoy similar outcomes? Email us at [email protected]
Kristin School Case Study Download
by Chris Hargreaves | May 21, 2023 | News, Press Release
Electricity transmission pricing hike delivers nasty jolt
Changes to national grid operator Transpower’s transmission charges took effect in April – and as with most things in life, there are winners and losers.The updated transmission pricing methodology (known as TPM) significantly differs from previous years, and has delivered a mixed bag of rises and cuts for domestic and industrial users.
State owned enterprise, Transpower, has been allowed to recover $830 million by the Commerce Commission for running the network and the increased costs are now being passed on to end users.
Changes to charging methodology
Transpower Head of Grid Pricing Rebecca Osborne said the Electricity Authority has designed the new methodology to more closely reflect the costs and expected benefits of electricity transported across Transpower’s 12,000 kilometres of transmission lines.
There should be no surprises across the electricity industry about the new transmission charges, she said.
“We’ve consulted with customers along the way and provided information as the elements have developed, including updating our indicative prices… and providing indicative rates information in early November.”
“Total transmission revenue, as set by the Commerce Commission, remains the same, but how it is distributed among Transpower customers has changed.”
Encourage renewable generation
The Authority expects the new approach to transmission charges to encourage investment in renewable generation and electrification of industrial processes.
According to Transpower, the main change in the new transmission pricing is a move to a benefit-based approach where customers pay in proportion to the benefit they are expected to receive from some historic and all future transmission investments.
The previous methodology spread the cost of the HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) link connecting the two main islands across South Island generators and spread the cost of all other interconnection assets across local lines companies and major industrial users.
Some Northland, East & West Coast customers hit hardest
In general, this means cost increases for local lines companies and some of the largest industrial customers in the north of the country because they are further away from where the bulk of generation is located in the South Island.
It also means North Island generators will begin contributing to the cost of the interconnected transmission assets and South Island generators will contribute less.
Consumers in Northland, the east coast of the North Island, and the West Coast have faced the biggest hikes, while Wellington and some South Island areas have seen prices fall.
The final amount that consumers pay for their transmission charges is ultimately decided by local lines companies, these charges typically make up between 8 and 10 percent of power bills.
Big power users such as the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter have seen an almost $10m price cut, while NZ Steel mill at Glenbrook faces an $11m increase.
Earlier in the year the Electricity Authority calculated movements would generally be small.
Those most affected may take issue with this. Indeed, Buller Electricity filed for a judicial review after being told its transmission charges would rise by 427 percent.
by David Spratt | Apr 5, 2023 | Energy, News
As renters and homeowners in the 1970s and 80s we were accustomed to hot water cylinder ‘ripple control’ – the mechanism whereby power companies assured us of a cold shower when we got home from work.
The trade-off was that households were able to operate stoves, lights and televisions without power cuts. Then along came the Clyde Dam and all this went away.
Until now.
If we take all our light vehicles off the road and replace them with EVs, this would increase our electricity demand by 20% (EECA Nov 2022). Add to this new ‘green’ data centres built by Google, Microsoft, AWS and our own IT companies, and this will likely add a further 10% to our current electricity needs. Our already stretched electricity supply infrastructure simply won’t cope.
The Energy Trilemma is defined as the need to find balance between energy reliability, affordability, and sustainability and its impact on everyday lives.
Understanding the challenges to balancing these three core elements is vital to keeping the lights on, the economy operating and achieving goals such as Net Zero carbon emissions.
Energy Reliability
The energy system aimed at ensuring reliability in New Zealand is made up of three interconnected parts:
Generation which comes mainly from the dams in South Island Lakes.
Transmission – Transpower’s multibillion dollar electricity supply backbone, built mainly in the 1950s and 1980s on 30,000 properties, with 25,000 transmission towers supporting 11,000 kms of lines and their essential 170 substations.
Distribution – Delivering electricity to homes and businesses via 27 regional Lines Companies, most of whom are locally owned. These companies own the power poles, lines and transformers that bring electricity to our door.
These three elements are highly regulated and involve investments in assets worth billions of dollars.
Our whole energy system is funded by debt that must be paid for by current and future generations.
Who pays and when is the big issue here. Is it today’s user, their children or their children’s children?
This is called intergenerational debt servicing and presents huge challenges when deciding the fairest way to distribute the cost of assets that in some instances might have a useful life of fifty years or more – or in the case of dams much longer than that.
To make things worse, an emerging issue with these investments is the risk of what is known as ‘stranded assets.’ This happens when transformational technologies such as solar and wind based distributed energy systems makes further investment in centralised dams, transmission and distribution uneconomic. When this happens the debt remains but the ability to pay by leveraging (charging for) existing or new assets is reduced or disappears completely.
Affordability and Equity
The New Zealand economy is reliant on agriculture which in turn is reliant on energy. However, economic theory suggests that on a ‘user pays’ basis, a farmer in a remote location should pay more than an apartment dweller in a big city or town. After all it is, at first glance, far cheaper to provide an urban dweller power than it is to run kilometres of copper wire to a small number of farms down a rural highway.
Recent changes to the way costs are allocated for Transpower’s transmission backbone came up with the proposition that the further you are from the source of the power (the lakes) the more you pay because you accrue greater benefit.
This means that a dairy farmer in Northland pays much, much more for connection to the grid than a Southland farmer producing the same products with the same amount of electricity. It conveniently ignores the fact that three quarters of the population of New Zealand is in the North Island and therefore paid for at least this proportion of the massive costs of building our generation and transmission infrastructure in the first place.
Taking this economic puffery to its logical extreme we should be seeing city lines companies like Vector punishing those who are not living in the inner city by charging more for connections to their homes. Thank heavens for the Elected Trustee model that makes this kind of logic totally politically untenable.
While the Trust model provides a level of protection from purist economists, unelected energy officials aren’t as susceptible to the wrath of the voters.
Our government market regulator, the Commerce Commission, doesn’t even have an affordability or equity objective when addressing the electricity market. Instead, it’s ‘Right investments, Right Time at the right cost.’
What about doing ‘right’ by the rural communities generating enough food for 40 million people globally and generating exports in excess of $72 billion annually?
Sustainability
Electricity generated by gas fields, coal and oil fired power stations is expensive, carbon emitting and directly impacts the wholesale market price of electricity.
Over the past decade or so we have seen a steady decrease in their contribution to the country’s generation capacity as generators have switched off coal and gas fired capacity. A government ban on further oil and gas exploration and the rapid decline in our existing gas resources in and around Taranaki has placed even more pressure on our electricity supply.
The net result, as demand threatens to exceed supply, is that wholesale and forward prices are at record levels now and well into the future.
One answer to this supply issue might be Lake Onslow – pumped hydro – essentially a $17 billion, ten year project to deliver a giant hydro powered battery designed to help protect against hydro shortages.
Adding 1200 megawatts capacity (roughly an eighth of the country’s current peak capacity) would potentially help bring the volatile wholesale market for electricity back to some semblance of normality.
The Government has just made a decision to complete a $70 million business case on Lake Onslow. Add to that the $30 million they have already spent and it looks like this decision will be a major electricity industry inflexion point.
It’s difficult to see the GenTailers detaching themselves from the status quo and its associated super profits. As such it has been no surprise at all to see them aggressively highlight research from reports that paint the Onslow Project as an expensive and impractical idea.
What I have failed to see is any practical alternative being offered – other than the monopolists’ favourite – punishing vulnerable consumers into changing their behaviour by raising prices at peak time. This is not a great option when young consumers are juggling hungry children, bath times, winter heating bills and brutal mortgage interest rates, and dairy farmers have cattle lined up outside the sheds for milking.
Barring the embedded carbon costs of construction materials like steel and concrete, Onslow offers a sustainable opportunity to enhance the viability of inconsistent generation sources such as solar, wind and tidal generation. By providing a massive hydro based battery to store load as and when it is created, we could see wholesale prices back in the 8-12 cents per kw.
This would see the benefits of lower input costs flowing to farms, businesses and households instead of into the pockets of the gentailers and governments eager to feed off the dividends their super profits are providing.
- Part three of this series will address that most controversial of subjects – Water, Waste and Stormwater. Call it Three Waters if you like. I call it a right mess.
by Chris Hargreaves | Apr 5, 2023 | News, Panoramic Power
Ever had sky high utility bills at your investment or commercial property that you can’t explain? Or are you looking for an energy solution that provides an accurate breakdown of tenant consumption so that you can bill by usage rather than square metre?
Meet Panoramic Power!
It’s predictable, reliable, never sweeps costs under the carpet and hates waste. It’s always fair, makes everyone pay their way and works on facts rather than assumptions.
Total Utilities has been leveraging its power as part of its Total Tenant Metering Solution – to break down utility billing for clients to a granular level. It enables us to pinpoint any potential cost savings and sustainability gains through efficient power use, as well as detect any power faults or maintenance issues that could be costing you dearly in your common areas.
Panoramic Power, combined with our knowledge and expertise in analysing data, gives you the ability to manage your energy consumption right down to device level across your entire property.
It also enables you to avoid the inconvenience of regular visits from the meter reader! Whether you’re a landlord, property manager or tenant, this could be the perfect billing solution! Read on to get to know Panoramic Power better…
Panoramic Power
Occupation: Energy Insights tool – working as part of Total Utilities’ Tenant Metering Solution.
Relationships: In an exclusive relationship with Total Utilities as part of Centrica’s ‘Energy Insights’ package.
About Panoramic Power: A wireless sensor technology that transmits data from all your energy-using equipment and devices in real-time to a cloud-based analytics platform called PowerRadar. It can be used as part of Total Utilities’ tenant metering solution to give full visibility into your energy usage.
Designed for simple, quick, non-intrusive installation with minimal business disruption. Requires no maintenance and is a revolution in energy management.
Can provide detailed insights into how, why and where energy is being used within your property or common areas and where it’s being wasted.
Collects detailed utility usage information, enabling Total Utilities to analyse its data and help landlords bill tenants fairly based on individual consumption.
Not only enables property owners to charge residents fairly and accurately for the amount of energy consumed during a billing period, but also provides important feedback on energy consumption to encourage behavioural change.
Promotes energy conservation and savings.
Best qualities:
- Gifted in accurately measuring and collecting data.
- Great with numbers.
- Passion for measuring and conserving energy for a cleaner, greener planet.
- Extremely low maintenance.
- Always provides useful insights in real time.
- Hates inefficiencies and energy wastage.
- Enables landlords, property managers and tenants to save energy and money.
Bad habits: None. Excellent credit history. Likes to keep things clean and green.
Ready to meet?: If Panoramic Power sounds like your type of Energy Insights tool, contact Total Utilities and we can hook you up with our Total Tenant Metering Solution.
Keen to find out more before committing?: Panoramic Power and Centrica Energy Insights come with their own Total Utilities Centre of Energy Excellence Brochure. (Click here)
