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EnergyAccess® Fact Page
Q: What is EnergyAccess?
A: A Windows-based software application that communicates with Energy
Sentry® 9300 Series demand controllers and monitors. It acts as a complete user
interface allowing access to all programmable features and functions of Energy
Sentry demand controllers and demand monitors.
Q: What does the EnergyAccess software do?
A: It allows you to monitor how your building is consuming electricity in real time
-- as it's happening. This immediate snapshot of your plant's electric use
is very useful for controlling loads manually. For non-immediate use, Energy
Sentry lets you store your load profile data on your hard drive and recall
it later for analysis and printout.
Q: Why should I be concerned about how my plant uses electricity?
A: If you can manage your plant's or company's operations better, you can reduce peak
demand charges and save substantially on your monthly electric bills.
Q: Does EnergyAccess work by itself?
A: No. EnergyAccess is a user interface tool for Brayden Automation's Energy
Sentry 9300 Series Commercial and Industrial demand controllers and monitors.
You must have a 9300 Series product installed in order to use EnergyAccess.
Q: How do you work with EnergyAccess?
A: Load the software onto your PC computer or laptop, and connect your computer
to an Energy Sentry demand controller or monitor. If you've used an Energy
Sentry demand controller or monitor before, you know that you turn a knob
on the front panel to see how your building is using electricity. This step
is eliminated with EnergyAccess. You see ALL the information at once
in the main Status Window. At the bottom of the Status Window are the Power
Bar and a Countdown Timer. Together, these three tools tell you at a glance
how "good" or how "bad" your building's usage of electricity
is compared to your demand limit. If you are controlling demand manually,
you can "see" what your current average demand is and respond at the proper
time.
How you make use of EnergyAccess depends on your needs. Here are
some practical uses for EnergyAccess:
· Check your peak demand versus your current demand limit.
· Graph your instantaneous and average peak demands, and on/off load
status.
· Use the alarm setting, so if your building is about to exceed a
demand limit, you can manually turn off equipment.
· Program EnergyAccess to send you an email or text message upon a peak
demand alarm condition.
· Store data to verify that your monthly electric bill was correct.
Let's say you've exceeded your 50KW lower-rate threshold during the month,
according to your electric bill. With EnergyAccess, you can check
the log file for that period, find how and when the peak occurred, and which
electrical loads may have contributed to the peak.
You can:
- LOG load profile data to your HARD DISK in snapshots ranging from every
15 minutes to approximately every second.
- GRAPH your load profile and look at it right away or later.
- For later Graphing of the log files later, you can see the peak demand,
kilowatt-hour(kwh) use, and load factor for the time duration of the file
(usually daily).
- EXPORT log files in .csv format to Excel or other programs for creating
graphical displays,
- EXPORT log files in .csv format as an interval data file to Excel or
other programs
Let's say you're planning a lighting retrofit to reduce your electric bill.
Use EnergyAccess with a 9320 demand monitor to set a baseline before your retrofit. Log data
for several typical days. Then do your retrofit. Use EnergyAccess
for monitoring and verification to see how effective you were.
Q: Are competitive products available?
A: Yes, there are other commercial energy management systems on the market
that gather electric data. These products are very expensive. However, they
generally do not allow you to view the data real time. EnergyAccess
stores values in a form that's easy to understand.
Q: What type of business would be best for EnergyAccess?
A: Any business that can manage its energy use better by using a demand
controller or monitor is a good candidate for EnergyAccess. If you
are served by a utility that offers customers reduced electric costs for
keeping peak demands low, you may be a good candidate for EnergyAccess.
Q: How long does it take to install EnergyAccess and use it?
A: Installing EnergyAccess is an easy process
that takes just a few minutes. Learning EnergyAccess depends on your
needs and how much you want to do with the software. We estimate you can
be very competent in one hour or less.
Q: How much does it cost?
A: EnergyAccess costs $995. This is much lower than many products
available which are not as powerful as EnergyAccess.
Q: How can I learn more about EnergyAccess or where to buy
it?
A: Contact Brayden Automation at (970) 461-9600 for the name of the dealer
near you or visit our dealer information page.
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