3-D can help control peak electric demand. (Technology-Update).

Controlling peak electric demand may be made easier when a customer's power use can be visualized in 3-D. Doing so is possible by using data from existing electric meters and a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel. That's the message of "Dirt Cheap Data Visualization," the December Tip of the Month at www.energybuyer.org, a service of Energywiz, Inc. Energywiz is a New York-based energy consulting firm focused on helping commercial/industrial energy customers and their consultants get the most out of the competitive energy marketplace.

Most commercial/industrial electric accounts using 1,000 kilowatts or more are billed using an interval meter that reads usage in short time increments and reports that data through a phone line to a utility computer. Since their electric bills don't show this information, most customers are unaware that such detailed metering data may be available to them.

"Even when they get the data," said Energywiz, Inc. president Lindsay Audin, "the difficulty analyzing 3,000 numbers every month has limited customer use of this information." While various expensive software exists for that task, anyone owning Excel can successfully derive value from interval data, says Audin. "By following a few easy steps, you can create a 3-D graph showing your monthly, or even annual, load shape and be able to view the graph from any angle, using a PC. That can help pinpoint reasons for demand spikes, control system failures, and other expensive problems," he concluded.

The December Tip walks facility managers and their consultants through the process of converting interval data into a 3-D landscape, and then shows them how to "fly" across that surface to find power usage problems that could save them thousands of dollars.