Introducing COPPER - You cannot manage what you do not measure. These are wise words and especially relevant when it comes to electricity usage. In a country like South Africa where electricity cost increases have become a regular discussion point one would think that all companies would have access to a real time energy management platform that they can use to intelligently manage their electricity costs. Unfortunately this is not the case, and the systems that do exist are not intelligent nor easy to use and understand.

It is for this reason that the experienced engineers and software developers at Terra Firma Solutions developed COPPER, an intelligent energy management platform that helps customers to monitor, manage and even control their electricity usage. Through an online platform and fortnightly reporting the Terra Firma Solutions team advise on inefficiencies and opportunities to reduce energy costs.

“The COPPER experience begins with our team of engineers visiting your facility and designing the meter and modem layouts which would result in the optimal use of the system,” says Ed Gluckman, CEO. “Following installation, all it takes is a short easy tutorial on the system and COPPER starts to save you money.”Monitoring refers to real time billing, tariff analysis and reconciliation to municipal or Eskom bills. “COPPER allows you to generate your own electricity bills in order to reconcile it to your landlord’s. You can generate bills at any stage during the month to get a better feeling for how your electricity costs are trending,” said Gluckman. “Our clients can also assess different electricity tariffs to see if they might be able to change to a more favourable tariff.”COPPER includes all of the municipal and Eskom tariffs country wide which can be assessed in a single place.

On the management side, COPPER has intelligent algorithms that can identify wastage at your company and help you to identify technological and behaviour change opportunities which can be targeted to save you money. This intelligence extends to identifying wastage through temperature differentials which is a great tool to increase efficiency of air-conditioning and refrigeration. COPPER can also send out automated SMS’s warnings if predefined tolerances have been exceeded, allowing your facility manager to step in immediately to prevent wastage.

Control is the ability to take action and to turn specific energy using devices on and off if predefined tolerances are met, or based on scheduled start and end times. COPPER has the ability to communicate with your building and meters and to switch on or off specific circuits from your laptop or mobile phone.

Built on a robust and scalable IT architecture which is gathering data in five minute intervals COPPER is a truly real time offering to deal with rising electricity costs.

For more information please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 021 3001620 (Cape Town) or 011 5680768.