Duke Energy

Case Study

Duke Energy Residential Energy Research

Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest energy utilities, used an energy management system from PowerWise in the key phase of their residential energy research project titled “Developing Optimization Models and Analytics at the Household”. Duke measured detailed energy use in 61 homes in North Carolina. Duke selected participants from over 800 applicants, to assure a statistically significant mix of home and circuit types and sizes.

Electricity Metering Technology

PowerWise worked with Duke Energy to size the metering equipment, resolve data security questions, map out user access, and provide an API for integration into Duke’s systems. The flexibility and accuracy of the energy meters were the primary reasons Duke went with the SiteSage energy management system. 24 circuits in each residence were monitored in detail, with data collected every second, and sent to a cloud server every minute.

In all, the monitoring equipment from PowerWise flawlessly logged 2.1 billion data elements of live residential energy consumption in the participant homes over the year 2014.

Duke subjected the data to a suite of analytical processes to determine usage patterns, differences in energy use based on number of residents or home size, and other parameters.

At the 2015 national conference of the AESP (Association of Energy Services Professionals), Duke Energy presented an outline of their research. Among other factors, they studied:

• peak loads in homes and how they correlate with peak demand and energy generation
• what portion of energy use is “phantom” power (the energy used by equipment that never truly turns off);
• high energy-use appliances such as electric dryers and refrigerators

Analysis was completed by the end of 2015, with data available for planning and practices going forward.

Read the AESP conference paper.