One week, £65,000 saving with Marshall-Tufflex sub-meter

Energy management specialist Marshall-Tufflex is flavour of the month with a customer after saving the company more than £65,000 in just one week.

The client – a manufacturer of heating products – installed a Marshall-Tufflex Sinergy e-Tracker sub-metering unit to get an in-depth view of its energy usage over one week.

When the stats were examined the company discovered its electricity meters were making incorrect readings. The matter was taken up with the power supplier and a refund of £65,000 issued along with an assurance that future bills would be correct.

Marshall-Tufflex Business Development Manager Kristie Donachie explained that the client was interested in the Voltis commercial voltage optimisation system: “Their on-site Mains voltage was high – between 245V and 250V – making it a potentially good fit for voltage optimisation,” said Kristie.

“As part of the Voltis specification process we examined their billing data and discovered that power usage was much lower than the site’s Main Switch Rating of 400Amps. To enable a closer fit for a VO unit, and better payback, I suggested installing an e-Tracker for a week to get a better idea of energy usage. When fitting the e-Tracker the electrical engineer noted that it was showing a different reading to site meters. The client also mentioned that they had had questions about their usage for quite some time.”

The e-Tracker, which took about 30 minutes to install between the Mains supply cable and the Main Distribution Board, was removed after one week and the statistics examined.

“The client, with the aid of the e-Tracker, identified that its electricity meters were reading ‘wrong’,” said Kristie. “They questioned the billing data with their supplier and received a refund of £65,000. To have saved the client so much money by doing something so simple is amazing.”

The Sinergy e-Tracker is a portable kWh meter allowing users to monitor incoming power supply, specific circuits/equipment etc to show the pattern of demand over an hour, day, week or month.

The unit utilises non-invasive clip-on transducer (CT) clamps that are quick to install and do not require power being turned off. They are magnetic-backed so attach easily to switch boards making them perfect for temporary monitoring. e-Tracker measures current from 10Amps to 2500Amps.

The system offers 16 days of battery life or runs off mains supply. Other features include pulse input, optional voltage connections, CT amps range indicator and EV-Trac electrostatic phase identifier.