Managing demand alerts

Demand Alerts flag unexpected and unintended levels of energy demand in your building. You define your expected demand and set a threshold that indicates a problem. When demand exceeds this threshold, you receive an email notification, and an event is displayed on the load curve chart. You can then update the event status, leave comments, and track performance across your portfolio via central dashboards.

Example Use Cases:

• Monitoring Overnight Base Load: Set a threshold just above the normal baseline for overnight monitoring. If the building isn’t properly shut down or if the base load drifts up, you’ll be warned.
• Monitoring Weekend Runs: Set a threshold based on expected levels for weekend days. If the building is left at weekday settings, an alert will be triggered.

Managing alert policies

To manage your alerts, visit the policy manager page for a meter in your account, found on the Alerts tab.

This contains several sections:

• A preview of your meter’s demand. This includes up to 52 weeks of historical data (depending on how long the meter has been reporting). Each week’s demand is represented by a gray line, and the average demand is represented by the heavy red line. Existing policies are shown as translucent orange bars.
• A form for creating a new policy or editing existing ones. 
• A list of existing policies, with controls for modifying them.

Setting up a new alert policy

To create a new policy, use the form below the load curve preview, and follow these steps. 

1. Select the days of the week you want the policy to be active.
2. (Optional) Set the start and end time you want the policy to be active. You can select preset times from the dropdown menus, or type a custom time. If you leave these blank, the policy will be continuously active on the days you select.
   
   Note: the times shown are in local time for the building, which may not be the same as the time shown on your computer if you’re located in a different time zone. To avoid confusion, the building’s time zone is displayed below the form. 
3. Set the demand threshold you want to test for, in kW.Once you’ve filled out the form, you’ll see a preview of the new policy overlaid in purple on the chart, and an estimate of how many alert events will be generated annually based on the settings you’ve chosen.
   
   The width of the overlay bars represents the time window in which the policy is active, and the bottom edge of the bars show the kW threshold. Based on where this overlaps the historical demand lines, you can see how likely it is to trigger an alert event at a given time of day.
   
4. After adjusting the policy settings to your liking, click the Add alert policy button. The policy will appear in the list below, and will begin actively monitoring your meter.

Editing an existing policy

After a policy has been active for a while, you may find you want to adjust the settings to tune how frequently alert events and notifications are generated. 

To edit the policy:

1. Find the relevant policy in the list, and click the Edit button (pencil icon) on the far right. The details of the policy will appear in the form, and the policy will be highlighted in purple in the preview chart.
2. Adjust the policy settings as needed, per the instructions above.
3. Click the Save alert policy button to confirm your changes.

Temporarily deactivating a policy

In some cases, you may want to temporarily stop a policy from monitoring or sending notifications. For example, if you are hosting an event for which your building will be running outside of normal hours, you expect your demand to be higher than normal during that time and alerts would not be useful.

There are two options for doing this:

1. To pause a policy, click the Pause button (two vertical bars icon) on the far right. While paused, the policy will not monitor your meter, and will not generate alert events or send notifications. 
2. To mute a policy, click the Mute button (bell icon) on the far right. While muted, the policy will continue to monitor your meter and generate alert events, but will not send notifications.
   
   Note: if your policy is muted but not paused, you will continue to see events on the weekly report for that meter; only real-time notifications are disabled. 

In both cases, the policy will automatically reactivate after 24 hours, to avoid accidentally leaving it inactive after the event is past. 

Viewing alert events

When Gridium detects demand exceeding the threshold for an active policy, it generates an alert event, which is shown as a red bar overlaid on the energy use load curve chart for that meter.

As in the policy preview chart, the width of the overlay bar represents the time window in which the demand threshold was exceeded, and the bottom edge of the bars show the policy threshold in kW.

Events end when one of two conditions is met:

• The meter’s demand drops below the policy threshold level;
• OR the policy’s active time window ends.

If the policy’s time window ends before demand drops, you may see high demand continuing on the chart beyond the edge of the red overlay.

To view details of the event, hover over the overlay bar with your mouse. You’ll be able to see the date and time when the event began, the demand threshold that it exceeded, and the actual demand for the point in time your mouse is over.

Comments and status updates

Clicking on an event displayed on the energy use load curve chart opens a pop-up window where you can manage the alert status and discuss the issue with your team.

An event can have four possible statuses:

• New: Open with no interaction.
• Investigating: Open and under investigation.
• No Action: Closed with no work required.
• Resolved: Closed after resolving the issue.

When an event is first created, its status is set to New. Clicking the buttons at the top of the window will change its status.

Investigating an event

To acknowledge an alert and indicate that you’re investigating the problem, click the I’m investigating button. The event’s status will be changed, and an entry will appear in the history showing when the update was made, and by whom. The button will also change, to indicate that the event is already under investigation.

Leaving a comment for your team

To add detail about what you’re doing, you can leave a comment on the alert event as well. To do this, type your message and click the Submit comment button. The comment will appear in the history along with any status updates.

Other users in your account can also leave comments on the event, to collaborate on finding a solution.

Closing an event

Once the investigation is complete, click the Close event button.

When closing an event, you’re required to enter a comment to explain the outcome of your investigation. After typing the comment, you can choose between two status options: clicking the No action needed button indicates that the problem doesn’t need any further attention, and clicking the Event has been resolved button indicates that you’ve addressed the issue. In either case, the event status will be changed and an update will be added to the event history. The control buttons will also change to reflect the new status.

Re-opening an event

If after closing an event you find that it needs more attention, you can re-open the event by clicking the I’m investigating button again.

Notification emails

When an alert event occurs, Gridium can also notify you via email. There are a couple of options for this, depending on how your meter is set up.

Instant notifications

If your alert policy is set up on a real-time meter or a utility meter which provides data with less than a 48-hour delay, Gridium will send a notification email as soon as we see demand exceeding your policy’s threshold. This email will go to any user who is subscribed to reports for that meter. Contact us to manage email subscriptions.

Note: there are various factors that may delay data from real-time meters, including meter and network settings. While we send instant notifications as soon as we receive the data, they may not be fully real-time.

This email includes several important pieces of data:

• The date and time the event occurred.
• A visual chart showing the meter’s demand, with the new alert event overlaid.
• The policy demand threshold which was exceeded.
• The actual demand at the time it was exceeded.

This also contains links to the policy which generated the alert, and to the event details on the meter’s energy use load curve chart, where you can manage status updates and comments.

Weekly report emails

For all meters, the Monday morning report email will include any demand alerts that may have happened during the prior week. As with instant notifications, this email will go to any user who is subscribed to reports for that meter. Contact us to manage email subscriptions.

This email includes similar data:

• A visual chart showing the meter’s demand, with all events overlaid.
• The date and time each event occurred.
• The policy demand threshold which was exceeded during each event.
• The actual demand at the time it was exceeded during each event.

This also includes a link for each event to view its details on the meter’s energy use load curve chart, where you can manage status updates and comments.