Savings on track
June 1st 2008

Public transport company The Go-Ahead Group is on track to meet its goal of reducing site energy consumption by 15%. IMServ has helped the organisation with its quest for energy efficiency, to increase profitability and minimise the impact of its operations on the environment

Set with an energy efficiency goal for 2007, the Go- Ahead Group, which operates bus, rail, car-parking and aviation support services throughout the UK, committed to looking at ways in which it could be achieved. With an array of sites ranging from a 32-acre train maintenance depot to small ticket offices, the need for a complete overview of site energy usage was of paramount.

Across the 450 sites in the Group's portfolio, 40 were originally registered in the half hourly market – where the energy usage is recorded automatically every 30 minutes. The only form of visibility on this energy usage that the Group received was pages and pages of raw data on spreadsheets.

Chris Grinsted, group environment and energy manager at Go Ahead, comments: "Good quality energy data is essential, not only to see if you are achieving your targets, but also to assess whether targets are in fact realistic. Basing goals on estimated or incomplete data will merely distort the results and a true reflection of any energy reduction efforts cannot be seen." Now with the help of IMServ, the Group receives accurate energy information with added intelligence through Energy DataVision (EDV), an easy-to-use and secure web-based tool. Energy consumption from all the registered half-hourly sites can now be viewed through one window, eliminating the need to plough through pages of spreadsheets.

Data can be viewed in its simplistic form through graphs showing profile data or tables detailing registered reads, or at a more sophisticated level by benchmarking and monitoring sites.

Chris comments,"I can now compare and contrast the performance of sites; something which I've never been able to do before." To obtain a greater insight into the consumption across the Group's vast portfolio, a rollout of non halfhourly smart meters was planned.

However, through this exercise it soon became apparent that some sites registered as non half-hourly were using so much energy that they should be classed as halfhourly.

Approximately 60 supplies changed profile class which enabled The Go Ahead Group to re-negotiate the tariff price for these supplies – this alone has saved the Group some £300,000.

Smart meters were installed on the additional non half-hourly electricity supplies, providing the same energy intelligence as those registered as half hourly. Now the Group benefits from an increased high level overview of its energy usage.

Today the Group has access to energy data for 90% of its consumption within the bus division and 70% of consumption within its rail division, and has found itself on the right track to meeting its targets.