Wineries are energy-intensive operations. Every stage depends on reliable power, from crushing and pressing to fermentation, bottling, cold storage, irrigation and cellar door hospitality. At the same time, customers increasingly expect producers to demonstrate genuine sustainability, not just talk about it.
That’s where smart energy metering comes in. Done well, it gives wineries the visibility and control to cut costs, reduce emissions and improve resilience without compromising quality.
Why Wineries Need Smart Energy Metering
Traditional utility meters tell you how much energy you used, usually once a month. They don’t tell you where, when or why. For a winery, that’s a problem because refrigeration and cold storage run almost continuously, pumps and compressors ramp up hard during vintage, cellar door operations often share supply with production and solar batteries and EV chargers are becoming part of the mix.
Energy costs are rising, tariffs are getting more complex and many wineries have net zero or emissions reduction targets. Without granular data, you’re essentially guessing which investments will pay back and where waste is hiding. Smart energy metering replaces guesswork with real numbers.
It lets you see which sheds, tanks, chillers, lines or buildings drive demand in real time and over seasons.
What Smart Energy Metering Means in Winery Language
Smart energy metering combines advanced meters with software to turn raw electrical data into insights you can act on. A typical system lets you:
- Submeter by area and process (fermentation cellar, barrel hall, bottling line, admin, cellar door, irrigation pumps)
- Monitor in real time (seeing kW, kWh, power factor and demand peaks as they happen)
- Capture time-of-use patterns to understand how load profiles change
- Track power quality issues that can damage equipment
- Allocate costs fairly between business units, brands or tenants.
Crucially, smart meters are usually installed inside your switchboards, often on multiple circuits at once, so you don’t need one bulky meter per load.
Where Wineries Typically Waste Energy
Every site is unique but smart energy metering tends to uncover similar patterns across refrigeration and cold storage, compressed air systems, pumps and irrigation, cellar door and hospitality operations and basic staff habits.
Poor setpoints, leaks, unnecessary operation during peak tariffs and “always left on” loads can quietly add thousands to bills each year. Metering reveals when systems work hardest and makes inefficiencies obvious.
Practical Use Cases in Action
Here’s what smart energy metering looks like when it’s actually working.
Harvest and vintage insights
Compare energy use per tonne of grapes processed, per litre of wine produced or per SKU, season on season. See how process changes actually impact energy intensity.
Fermentation and temperature control
Link energy data with tank temperature control to identify over-cooling, poorly performing insulation or control strategies that cycle more than necessary.
Solar and battery optimisation
Match your load profile with solar generation to decide the right size system, then verify performance after installation. Smart meters help ensure you’re using your solar to offset the right loads.
Demand charge management
Identify which equipment combinations cause demand spikes and trial simple changes like staggering pump starts or shifting cleaning cycles to smooth peaks and avoid penalties.
Internal billing
If you have on-site businesses (breweries, cafes, artisan producers, accommodation), smart submetering lets you bill them fairly for actual energy usage instead of estimates.
A Simple Roadmap to Get Started
You don’t need to do everything at once. A sensible winery roadmap might start with clarifying your goals, whether the priority is cost reduction, sustainability reporting, reliability or supporting investment cases for solar or new equipment. That drives what and where you meter.
Work with your electrical contractor to map your electrical distribution and identify key switchboards and circuits. Deploy multi-circuit meters at the right points to capture as many critical loads as possible from each board, reducing hardware and installation costs. Connect to an energy management platform that provides dashboards, alarms, reports and automated billing.
Finally, engage your team by sharing simple, relevant dashboards showing weekly kWh per tonne crushed, cellar door kWh per visitor or top loads this month.
SATEC's Smart Energy Metering Solutions for Wineries
SATEC Australia specialises in advanced energy metering and management solutions for commercial and industrial sites, including multi-tenant and multi-process facilities.
Three elements of SATEC’s portfolio are particularly relevant for wineries:
Multi-Circuit Energy Meters
The NMI approved BFM136 Branch Feeder Monitor is a compact, multi-channel energy meter designed to sit inside existing switchboards and monitor many circuits at once, up to 12 three-phase or 36 single-phase loads in various combinations.
For non NMI requirements, the BFM II modular multi-circuit branch feeder monitor for up to 54 current inputs (18 three-phase circuits).
For wineries, that means you can submeter refrigeration compressors, fermentation and barrel hall supplies, bottling lines, cellar door and kitchen distribution boards, vineyard pumps and irrigation systems and on-site accommodation or other tenants.
Key advantages for a winery environment include its multi-circuit design (one compact meter replaces dozens of legacy meters, saving space and installation cost), NMI-approved billing status (the BFM136 is the only multi-circuit energy monitor solution covered under Australia’s National Measurement Institute NMI M 6-1 regulations as an approved electricity billing meter, enabling compliant sub-billing), revenue-grade accuracy (Class 0.5/0.5S accuracy for active energy supports robust cost allocation) and flexible communications through built-in Modbus and BACnet options that enable integration with building management systems and third-party software.
In practice, a winery can install branch feeder monitor (BFM) technology at main and sub-distribution boards to create a complete, granular picture of where energy is used across the estate, from vineyard pumps to the tasting room.
EM133-XM for Main Incomers and Critical Loads
The EM133-XM is a compact, three-phase DIN-rail meter designed for accurate monitoring of main incomers and critical feeders, making it ideal for a winery’s primary switchboard and major loads such as chillers, bottling lines and pump stations.
In a winery context, you can use the EM133-XM to monitor the main site supply and compare total consumption against sub-metered areas like cellar, bottling and cellar door. It’s also valuable for tracking key high-load circuits where reliability and accuracy are crucial, such as refrigeration or main pump boards, while keeping an eye on power quality parameters like voltage, demand, power factor and harmonics to protect sensitive production equipment.
Key benefits for wineries include revenue-grade accuracy suitable for verifying bills and tracking efficiency initiatives, a clear local display that allows operators to quickly check key parameters without logging into software (particularly handy during vintage or fault-finding) and flexible integration through communication options like Modbus that allow the EM133-XM to feed data into SATEC’s Expertpower cloud platform or existing building management and SCADA systems.
Used together, EM133-XM meters at the main incomer and BFM technology on downstream circuits give wineries a complete “top to bottom” view of energy usage, from the site boundary right down to individual process loads.
Expertpower Energy Management Software
Data is only useful if people can see and understand it. SATEC’s Expertpower platform is a cloud-based energy management and meter data management system that collects, stores and analyses data from SATEC meters.
For wineries, Expertpower provides dashboards and reports tailored for operations, finance and sustainability teams, including energy use by area, process, time and tariff. It supports submetering and billing for complex scenarios across electricity, water and gas, with tenant portals to view bills and online data.
The platform includes power quality analysis tools to investigate voltage disturbances or harmonics that might affect sensitive equipment, plus alerts and optimisation features like consumption forecasts, demand alerts and time-of-use optimisation capabilities to help shift loads and reduce peak demand.
Expertpower is delivered as a modern, cloud-based service built on Microsoft Azure so wineries can start small and scale their monitoring as they grow without managing on-premise servers.
Bringing It All Together
For wineries, smart energy metering is no longer a “nice to have.” It’s a practical tool to cut operating costs without sacrificing quality, support solar and battery projects, provide credible data for sustainability reporting and certifications and improve resilience during critical production periods.
By combining multi-circuit meters like SATEC’s BFM136 and BFM II along with the EM133-XM for main incomers and the powerful Expertpower platform, wineries can turn energy data into decisions, from the vineyard pump shed to the barrel hall.
If you’re planning upgrades, considering solar and storage or simply tired of surprise energy bills, smart energy metering is one of the highest-leverage tools you can put on the table.
Talk to one of our smart energy metering experts about your needs.
FAQs - Smart Energy Metering for Wineries
What is smart energy metering in a winery?
Smart energy metering uses advanced meters and software to track how, when and where your winery uses electricity across key areas like refrigeration, pumps, bottling and cellar door.
How can smart energy metering reduce my winery’s power bills?
By revealing which equipment and processes drive peak demand and waste, you can adjust run times, fix issues and right-size investments like solar or new chillers.
Why would I choose SATEC for smart energy metering?
SATEC offers compact, multi-circuit NMI-approved meters and powerful software that make it easy to submeter multiple loads, allocate costs and manage energy in detail.
Can smart energy metering help with tenant or internal billing at my winery?
Yes. With SATEC’s multi-circuit meters and Expertpower, you can accurately sub-bill tenants or internal business units based on actual consumption, not estimates.
