ALDI chooses Siemens energy management platform for 1,500 stores

by Brianna Crandall — March 23, 2016—In a move complementing its earlier energy-management / carbon-reduction initiatives, grocery retailer ALDI, which operates stores in 32 U.S. states, selected global technology provider Siemens’ Site Controls Energy Management System (EMS) to deploy at nearly 1,500 of its retail locations.

The majority of the EMS installations are retrofits at existing stores where thermostats or third-party energy management systems were replaced, but Siemens also installed its Site Controls EMS in newly constructed stores as well.

This energy management program will leverage advanced cloud-based technology to build upon the grocer’s previous initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, such as the installation of solar panels, at dozens of retail stores and four distribution centers.

The Site Controls EMS reduces energy use at stores by monitoring and / or controlling key energy-consuming devices such as heating / ventilation / air-conditioning (HVAC) units, indoor lighting, store signage, indoor and outdoor temperature sensors, and refrigeration units. The EMS also monitors energy output and performance of on-site solar panels.

Complementing store-level optimization is the Site Controls Enterprise Portal, a cloud-based data analytics platform that provides the grocer enterprise-level dashboards, key performance indicators (KPIs), and outlier reporting to quickly pinpoint and resolve issues that would otherwise drive excessive consumption or negatively impact customer comfort.

The system can also help ALDI lower maintenance costs by streamlining identification of problems, intelligently dispatching, and remotely validating work performed by HVAC service technicians.

ALDI selected Siemens after an initial 16-site pilot in 2012 validated the Site Controls system’s ability to reduce consumption at its stores, and a 180-site rollout in 2013 demonstrated that results could be replicated across an entire region.

With the remaining Site Controls EMS now installed after less than 10 months of working closely together, ALDI anticipates reducing carbon emissions by an additional 29,000 metric tons per year — the annual equivalent of removing 6,100 cars from the road or of providing electricity for 4,000 homes.

ALDI will also install the Site Controls system in new stores as it continues to expand across the United States. The energy cost savings associated with the project were said to have exceeded ALDI’s capital investment criteria, providing a favorable return on investment (ROI).