The Opportunity

This rapidly growing chain of grocery locations was undergoing significant remodeling and new construction to update its geographically and physically diverse buildings. In addition, the stores have multiple Energy Management Systems (EMS) across their portfolio of facilities managing their refrigeration, HVAC, and lighting assets with various levels of standardization and complexity. To add to this, the corporate directive had been issued to reduce costs in the following areas:

• Energy (electric, gas, water)
• Refrigerated product loss/risk
• Maintenance (preventative, repair and staff overtime)
• Operational (behavioral, regulatory compliance)

The Partnership

In 2012, this grocery chain was looking to reduce costs relating to energy, refrigerated product loss, maintenance, and operations by gaining additional visibility into the management of their sites and systems.  
 
Through our partnership, we initially reviewed utility expenses to develop the portfolio’s baseline analytics and benchmarks. Once established, we engaged in EMS and refrigeration monitoring and enabled outlier and anomaly investigation services. The insights gained provided valuable knowledge on how the company directed its budget to further reduce energy and maintenance expenses.  
 
Further, ENGIE identified EMS opportunities to optimize systems and processes and provide key projects with remote validation, scheduling, setpoint and setting standardization as well as call center dispatch and project tracking/visibility. As the partnership grew, a pilot for after-hours maintenance call center support became a 24-hour Maintenance Call Center for the company, serving as a critically needed extension of the maintenance team.

3 Dimensions of Impact

With this strategy in place, this grocery customer’s energy management has resulted in bottom-line savings, improved operational efficiencies and continued data insights. The data helped to pinpoint and prioritize projects that provided the most immediate energy and cost savings.

ENGIE is committed to building three dimensions of impact in every customer’s future:
 
 

• Supporting People
  • Increase staff productivity with reliable service expertise and supplier management
• Saving Money
  • Enable preventative savings through data insights and prioritization capital expenditure
• Protecting the Environment
  • Maintain schedules and set points to uphold energy standards across all sites with 24/7 troubleshooting