Guides
Field guides on energy and maintenance
The method we use with multi-site chains, written out in full: how to read an energy bill, how to build a comparison across sites, how to prove a saving to the people who keep the books, and which machines pay back the monitoring. Read them here, or download the PDF.
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How to cut energy use across a chain of stores
The question almost always arrives in the same shape: we have fifty stores, the bill keeps growing, where do we start? The short answer is that you don't start with the equipment, you start with the data. Below is the order of the steps, each with the guide that covers it in full.
- 01
Understand what you are actually paying for
Before touching any equipment, read the invoice: how much of the bill is negotiable, how much contracted capacity you are paying for without using it, whether reactive power charges are showing up, and how much a site draws while it is closed. These are half-hour checks that often pay more than a technical retrofit.
The guide on this step: Anatomy of a store's energy bill - 02
Put the sites side by side
With fifty stores, what matters is not the absolute consumption of one site but how far each one sits from the others under comparable conditions. That means normalizing for floor area, opening hours and climate: without normalization you compare different things and fix the wrong store.
The guide on this step: How much should one of your stores consume - 03
Measure first, then automate
This is where we come in. The sensors measure what actually happens in the store, and the automation switches off or modulates what site staff cannot keep up with: HVAC, air curtains, lighting, window displays, kitchen equipment. No building work.
- 04
Prove the saving is real
A saving claimed without a reference line is an opinion, and it collapses at the first question from finance. You need a baseline built beforehand, and normalization for weather and price: otherwise you cannot tell the project apart from a mild winter.
The guide on this step: How to prove savings to a CFO - 05
Report what you did
Scope 1 and 2, per-site data, energy audits, guarantees of origin. What you need on hand before the auditor asks, and what measured data fills in on its own instead of being estimated.
The guide on this step: The energy you need to know how to report
What it actually recovers
Not a price-list promise: these are measured results on networks we run, each with its story told in full.
Guides for multi-site chains
Costs, benchmarks, business case and reporting.
- 01 / 4
Anatomy of a store's energy bill
Four macro line items, only one truly negotiable. How to read a site's invoice and find, in half an hour, the things that can be fixed right away without touching the equipment.
- 02 / 4
How much should one of your stores consume
How to build a yardstick for comparing sites, normalize it for climate and opening hours, and identify in one afternoon's work which stores consume more than they should.
- 03 / 4
How to prove savings to a CFO
A claimed saving without a baseline is an opinion. The method for building a number that stands up to management control's questions, and the line items that usually stay out of the math.
- 04 / 4
The energy you need to know how to report
Scope 1 and 2, per-site data, the energy audit, and guarantees of origin. What you need to have in hand before the auditor, a corporate customer, or the shopping mall's landlord asks for it.
Guides for maintenance teams
Vibration, payback, diagnostics and getting started.
- 01 / 4
How to read a vibration, when that number means something
ISO 20816-3 doesn't tell you whether a machine is broken. It tells you where its vibration level falls on a scale that changes with the machine type and with its support. This guide is for reading it.
- 02 / 4
On which machines monitoring pays for itself
Not every machine deserves a sensor, and saying so is part of the method. Here you'll find the order of the steps, the table for calculating the cost of downtime, and a grid for deciding where to start.
- 03 / 4
What a vibration tells you, and what it doesn't
Vibration diagnostics works, and it has precise limits. Here you'll find the typical defect signatures, where they really come from, and the questions a measurement alone cannot answer.
- 04 / 4
The first measurement is worth as much as your ability to repeat it
A monitoring program is decided before the first sensor: in the baseline, in the operating states you distinguish, and in the thresholds you write down. Here you'll find how to start, what the standards actually say, and what is merely common practice.
Sector benchmarks
What energy costs the margins of retail, care homes and hotels, from cited public sources.
- 01 / 3
How much energy weighs on retail EBIT
In Italian food distribution the energy bill is a small line on revenue and an enormous one on margin, because the margin is thin. Two numbers from the same source are enough to show it, and a third says where a store's energy actually goes.
- 02 / 3
Minus 35% energy in care homes over twelve months
The full-year record of two residential care facilities, quantified with the IPMVP methodology from measured consumption and normalised for weather and price. Not a design estimate: what actually happened over twelve months.
- 03 / 3
Energy use and margins in hotels
Italian hotels have the highest margin of any sector we work in, and they are also among the most energy-intensive per square metre. What the mandatory energy audits say, why the size of the property changes everything, and which end uses can actually be controlled.
The questions that come up in the meeting
These are the real objections, the ones an operations director or a finance team raise before signing. Every answer comes from the guides above, and every figure quoted carries its source.
How much does energy weigh on a retail chain’s P&L?
In Italian food retail, energy is 1.9% of sales but 70% of EBIT, because the sector EBIT margin is 2.7% (Area Studi Mediobanca, observatory on Italian food retail, 2026 edition on 2024 data: 118 companies, 95.8% of the market). One practical rule follows: every percentage point cut off the bill is worth 0.7% more EBIT. Turned around, one euro of energy saved is worth roughly 37 euros of additional revenue at the same margin.
What is the difference between a monitoring system and a BMS?
A monitoring system measures and reports: it tells you how much is consumed, when and where, but it changes nothing on its own. A BMS is the supervisory system that runs a building’s equipment, usually wired and configured site by site. Sintropy does both, across the whole estate: wireless sensors measure, and the TARS agent sends commands to HVAC, lighting, signage and air curtains with no human action. Where a supervisory system is already in place we do not replace it: in the care homes we run, data flows into the existing Siemens Desigo, and in hospitality into the Mitsubishi AE200 already installed.
How long does installation take, and does it stop trading?
The average is 4 hours per store. Sensors are stuck to the wall with adhesive and the gateway plugs into a socket: no drilling, no cabling, no store closure. On a care home network followed for twelve months, none of the automatic controls we switched on required stopping the plant to install anything.
Do we need to rewire the electrical system?
No. The network is wireless end to end and runs on the existing power supply; it talks to the equipment over Modbus, KNX or smart relays, without replacing any machine. Neutron, the outdoor sensor, runs on a solar panel: no electrical work and no plant downtime even to power it.
Which equipment can actually be controlled?
HVAC, lighting, signage, air curtains, display cases and air renewal; in food service, cooking equipment and the cold chain as well. At Yamamay we control air curtains, air conditioning, lighting, display windows and air renewal; at Miscusi the pasta cookers and the HACCP-monitored cold rooms. That is where the spending sits: refrigeration and space conditioning together account for 56% of a store’s electricity consumption (ENEA and Federdistribuzione, based on 309 energy audits). You act on setpoints and schedules, not on the machines.
How do you prove the saving to management control?
With a baseline built before the work starts, typically on twelve months of history, normalized for degree days, opening hours, site activity and energy price: the saving is the difference between the baseline restated at current conditions and the measured consumption, not the difference between two bills. The reference protocol is IPMVP, and in multi-site retail Option C, from the main meter, is used almost always. Bring both numbers to the meeting: on a restaurant site we manage, over seven months the gross saving was 18.7% and the normalized one 25.6%, which is 37,190 kWh not consumed.
We have fifty stores: where do we start?
Not with the equipment, with the data. First read the invoice, to see how much contracted capacity you pay for without using it, whether reactive power charges are showing up and how much a site draws while closed; then put the sites side by side, normalizing for floor area, opening hours and climate; then measure and automate; finally prove the saving against a baseline and report it. These are the five steps set out above on this page, each with the guide that covers it in full.
Which machines are worth putting a predictive maintenance sensor on?
Not all of them, and saying so is part of the method. ISO 17359 puts the cost-benefit analysis first, before choosing any sensor: you start from the cost of a stoppage on that specific machine, not from a sector average. And the benefit is not the full cost of the stoppage avoided but the difference between an unplanned and a planned intervention. On redundant machines, with spares on the shelf, or where the failure mode has no symptom measurable in advance, the honest answer is no.
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