HVAC energy
consumption monitoring
kWh and kW for every chiller, AHU, fan and pump, with run status and alerts. Add supply and return temperatures and flow, and the same system tells you how efficiently the plant makes cooling.
THE PROBLEM
HVAC is the biggest load in most buildings and the least visible
In hotels, hospitals, offices and malls, heating, ventilation and air conditioning is usually the largest single share of the electricity bill. Yet the plant room often has one meter for everything, and the BMS shows temperatures and setpoints rather than energy.
That makes common problems hard to see. A chiller that short-cycles, a condenser pump left at full speed, a fan whose VFD was bypassed during a repair and never reset. Each wastes energy for months, because the comfort conditions in the building still look fine.
Energy alone is half the answer. To know whether a chiller is efficient you need the cooling it delivered as well as the power it drew.
HOW WE SET IT UP
Meter each machine, then add the thermal side
Equipment-level sub-meters
We submeter chillers, AHUs, cooling tower fans, and primary and secondary pumps individually. kWh and kW per machine show which equipment drives the plant total.
Read what the plant already knows
Chiller controllers and VFDs usually expose power, load, speed and alarms over Modbus. Our gateway reads them, which adds detail without extra meters on every motor.
Thermal data for efficiency
Supply and return water temperatures and chilled water flow turn energy into an efficiency figure such as kW per ton of refrigeration. We bring these in from existing sensors or add PT100 probes where needed.
Run status and response time
Power draw shows when a chiller or AC unit stops. RIOD Live alerts the duty engineer and records how long the restart took, which is the measure engineering teams are judged on.
FROM THE FIELD
Where we have done this
Taj Hotels: chillers and air conditioning
We monitored power and run status on chillers and AC units so the engineering team could see downtime as it happened and track how quickly maintenance responded, instead of learning about a failure from a guest.
AT A GLANCE
HVAC energy monitoring at a glance
- Measured
- kWh and kW by equipment, run status; supply and return temperatures and flow when added
- Hardware
- Smart energy sub-meters, Sense-i current and power nodes, RS485 Modbus IoT gateway for chillers and VFDs
- Connectivity
- Ethernet or 4G from the plant room, RS485 to the plant controllers
- Alerts
- Equipment stop or abnormal load by automated call, WhatsApp, SMS, email or push
- Data goes to
- RIOD Live cloud, or the platform deployed on your own server
- Reports
- Audit trails on every report, PDF and Excel export, AI access to the data through MCP
- Engineering note
- Efficiency figures such as kW per ton use thermal data alongside the electrical data
FAQ
Questions buyers ask us
How do you measure chiller plant efficiency?
Measure the electrical power of the chillers, pumps and cooling tower fans, and the cooling delivered from chilled water flow and the supply and return temperature difference. Dividing power by cooling gives kW per ton, tracked over time and load.
Which HVAC equipment should be sub-metered?
Chillers first, then chilled and condenser water pumps, cooling tower fans and the largest AHUs. Those typically account for most HVAC energy. Smaller fan coil and split units can be grouped by distribution board.
Can we get HVAC energy data from our existing chillers?
Often yes. Many chiller controllers and VFDs report power and load over Modbus or BACnet gateways. Our Modbus gateway reads those registers, and we add meters to any plant that has no energy data of its own.
Can HVAC monitoring alert us when a chiller trips?
Yes. When power draw drops to zero outside a planned stop, RIOD Live alerts the duty engineer by call, WhatsApp, SMS or email, and logs the time to restart.
Want to see what your HVAC plant really uses?
Tell us the chillers, AHUs and pumps, and what their controllers expose. We will propose the metering and the efficiency data to add.