CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Managers that lower peak demand at their facilities via energy management systems and energy storage can save money on their electric bills, Richard Fox, senior vice president of engineering at Sanalife Energy, said Thursday at NFMT East 2026. Sanalife provides building energy management and automation solutions.
Because utilities need to ensure they have sufficient capacity, or electricity supply, for all customers’ peak loads, they use demand charges based on a facility’s peak demand to create incentives for facilities to reduce their peak loads, said Fox.
“You’re paying a huge premium for that [peak load] nowadays versus your total meter that just keeps recording kilowatts.”
Fox said he’s seen demand charges rise to almost $70 per kilowatt, “which means that every kilowatt you can trim off [your peak demand saves you] $70. So [if you] trim off 10 [kW] a month, it’s $700. Trim off 100 kW, that’s $7,000.”
Fox noted that a demand charge of $70 per kW is unusually high. Since prices are regional, they could be as low as $10 per kW. Prices tend to be lowest in the South, he said.
Even in lower-cost areas, he said, if facilities managers can reduce peak energy use and keep it low over time, “that’s really going to help reduce your cost,” he said.
Keeping energy use at a steady level over time is important because the peak price that customers pay can come down to a single 15-minute period in the billing cycle. “The rules of each utility [and their] tariff schedules can be a little different, but that’s how it works,” Fox said. Demand charges are also often dependent on the time of day.
Demand charges are starting to impact more customers, he said, so a facility’s energy management system is becoming more important. He encouraged building operators to use occupancy data and their EMS to monitor how their facility is using energy and use that data to inform decisions or automate actions, like initiating setbacks in the HVAC system or implementing a battery system to moderate when and how energy is pulled from the grid.
Traditional energy management systems track main utility data, bill data and in some cases data about key assets, Fox said. Today, systems can measure more data points, and at a lower cost. And the reliability of the wireless technologies that transmit the data is better, Fox said.
Once you can see how your building is operating, you can start to look at ways to manage peak demand, he said. “That’s the really neat thing, especially with systems that can tie back into the [building management system],” he said. “You can start to … do something about it in an automated fashion.”
