Factory Energy Monitoring: Start with a Useful Pilot

KEY POINTS

Choose a decision the data should help your team make.
Verify meter locations, labels and timestamps before trusting a dashboard.
Agree network access and ownership with the plant’s operations and IT teams.

Before connecting a factory to a new monitoring platform, define the question it should answer. A focused pilot can establish whether the measurements are useful, reliable and practical to maintain before extending coverage.

Choose one operating question

A useful starting point might be: which equipment remains energised outside production hours, when does the facility’s peak demand occur, or how does energy use change with production volume?

Choose a responsible owner and describe what action they could take from the answer. A dashboard without an agreed decision or follow-up process can add reporting work without improving understanding.

Define a measurement plan

Create a list of the circuits and equipment to observe. Record the meter location, measurement purpose, available communication method and the operating information needed alongside the electrical readings.

Item	What to verify
Measurement boundary	Which loads are included or excluded?
Meter configuration	Are ratios, units and circuit labels correct?
Time records	Are timestamps aligned with shifts and production records?
Data continuity	How are gaps, resets and offline devices identified?
Baseline	Does the period cover representative operating conditions?

Separate energy use in kWh from demand in kW. Schneider Electric’s guide to power loading provides background on assessing electrical demand. Neither a short snapshot nor the sum of equipment ratings is a substitute for a representative operating record.

Plan the connection with the plant team

Identify who owns each device, gateway, network connection and user account. Agree permitted access, remote support arrangements, backups and change control before connecting equipment.

NIST’s guidance for operational technology security considers the reliability and safety requirements of systems that interact with physical processes. Apply a suitable approach with the operations and IT teams; do not assume an office network practice automatically fits a production system.

Where the pilot only needs to observe, specify monitoring access rather than introducing control functions unnecessarily. Confirm compatibility with existing equipment and arrange any installation outage through the site’s normal process.

Evaluate the pilot against its purpose

For example, a team investigating out-of-hours demand could compare meter readings with the approved operating schedule and investigate unexplained loads. This is a planning example, not a claim about an ETES customer result.

Before expanding, confirm that the data is complete enough, the findings are understood and a named team can maintain the system. Assess savings only after a change is measured against a suitable baseline, allowing for changes in output and operating hours.

ETES can discuss electrical measurement points and connection requirements alongside EcoXplore’s monitoring services. Bring an existing single-line diagram, equipment list and the question your team wants to answer.