Local businesses of all sizes are assured savings on their energy bills with the TOP-Energy auditing software, now available in Australia and New Zealand.
The auditing software is the first tool in a suite of integrated solutions that captures, analyses, models and optimizes energy use. The integrated package works as a database, modeling system and financial software package in one. It has been purpose-designed for intuitive use and highly visual reporting.
“TOP-Energy makes spreadsheets look like slate tablets,” says Hugo Waibel, director of TOP-Energy’s Australia and New Zealand agency HW Technologies. “The auditing software is simple to use and produces automatic reports with tables and graphs that visualise energy flows and potential savings.”
TOP-Energy audits comply with the relevant Australian, New Zealand and International standards and are the first step to extracting maximum savings and efficiency gains.
“Conducting an energy audit creates a valuable database, which TOP-Energy customers can leverage for additional savings and strategic planning,” Waibel says.
The package’s modeling and financial software works with the database to help organisations plan their future energy supply and usage.
“This is where TOP-Energy comes into its own,” Waibel says. “Customers can create scenarios based around different supply options, infrastructure investments and rate changes to model the impact of decisions before they are made and undertake sensitivity analyses.”
All forms of energy are assessable with TOP-Energy including electricity, gas, thermal, chill, steam, compressed air and renewables like solar and wind. Even storage and co-generation options can be analysed, manipulated and assessed.
One customer who has seen the value of TOP-Energy is Local Government Infrastructure Services (LGIS).
LGIS is Australia’s only infrastructure services company totally focused on local government. It is fully owned by the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ), and works with councils across that State.
LGIS contracted HW Technologies in 2015 to audit and model the electrically-powered assets of Winton Shire, a local government area covering 53,935 square kilometres in Central Western Queensland.
“We used TOP-Energy to run various scenarios for future infrastructure investments,” says LGIS director energy projects Daniel Westall. “The results contributed valuable information to our strategic investment advice.
“Top-Energy provided inputs to financial modelling that gave LGIS and by extension our local government clients a high degree of confidence to proceed with procurement of new energy infrastructure.”
One Top-Energy feature that LGIS found particularly useful was the time series editor. This module enables an organisation to account for the variations that occur due to seasonal energy use and stores the enormous amount of data that is generated for future calculations and modeling.
“The time series editor makes averaging a thing of the past and enables organisations to plan in detail their season requirements and solutions,” Waibel says.