What are the most valuable lessons learned in energy management projects?

Get the Monitoring system in place for measurement and verification of well defined KPI, also plan for a techno-commercial analysis and criteria of project selections for next phase

People, People, People. People are the key success factor when it comes to implementing "Effective" energy management. Either top management or shop floor staff, it is crucial to gain their commitment and buy-in and keep them involved in the process with clear roles and responsibility and subsequently clear goals. People are always comfortable with what they are used to do and have resistance to change. So it is always challenging to change the organization's culture. How to motivate people: 1- Show them a clear benefit of what they are doing 2- Implement various capacity budling and awareness raising activities. 3- Linking the organization rewarding scheme with energy management objectives and goal. 4- Enhance team building activities.

The most challenging part for energy management is to get the buy in from the top management including their commitment eventhough the energy policy has been established.

The CEO saying "we need to reduce our energy usage by 20%" is not a helpful statement. The project needs to have already had an investigation to determine the key areas, especially those where the drain is not obvious. Then write goals that are verifiable.

One of the most important thing to consider while implementing EMS is to research well prior to implementing. And by research I mean deep dive into the analysis of the present system v/s the new system to be implemented. Have a clear mind of 1. Why are we doing this.? 2. What changes would be needed? 3. How much energy/money can be saved? 4. Any ROI.?

Ideally change management process to be in place, best way is to have a common workshop to define the “vision and culture” for the project development process. Stakeholders should be aligned to the overall vision beforehand to avoid misalignment.

Stakeholder engagement is one of the most important aspects of energy management projects. More often than not, energy management projects do not have the visibility due to energy costs being a cost center, that is why the projects pale in comparison to profit centers projects. However, the ability of the project champion to understand the stakeholders point of view and to showcase the value of energy projects is key in driving these projects forward.

It’s critical for businesses to align incentives to priorities, ensure the Responsibility-Accountable-Authority triangle isn’t fractured, and make sure that those who create costs feel the impacts of those costs. For example, if your Manufacturing Department is incentivized to maximize production, that’s what they will try to do, even if that results in failing to reach your conservation goals. This will be even more true if the cost of the energy that Manufacturing consumes is paid for by other departments.

Check the backgrounds of directors, mananagement teams using Companies House ..I know 2 companies who gained large scale P.V installations that have folded..the impact this has on investors is self explanatory..

One stakeholder that needs a clear defined purpose as well as the power to enact rules/changes is an “Energy Champion”. The champion is the one who drives the energy requirements/settings/training and owns the results. They need the authority to enact these changes and buy in from management to support the changes. The champion also enacts procedures to ensure the policies are followed by subsequent employees and process owners. Projects without a defined energy champion in an authoritative role fail.

It's important to have reliable energy consumption data. And a system that analyzes deviations from the data. This allows for quickly addressing the reasons behind any discrepancies. In addition, differences in property-specific consumption curves make it easier to compare properties with similar ones and consider solutions to improve energy efficiency.

Baselining consumption is important in any energy management process. It is the cornerstone to not only identify current performance but also to detail the continual improvement process. The choice of a baseline has to be both strategic and realistic. A particularly bad year would be a poor choice for a baseline due to huge improvement not showing up in the bills of the organisation. Similarly, the choice of metric used as a baseline has to reflect the dynamic nature of the business and needs to clearly be able to show improvement.

Baseline data is critical to have a clear picture of the starting point. It is equally important to get baseline data associated with normal behaviours, humans are the biggest influence on energy consumption, if you tell someone what you are doing, they are likely to change their normal behaviours because you are looking. Changes in normal behaviours can impact the baseline which can inturn damage a business case for improvements that are underpinned by energy savings. This is why a baseline across a longer period of time is better, getting at least 3 years of data and understanding what might have already been trialed or done during this period can help create better outcomes.

Stop over promising and under delivering. You do not need hundreds of sensors and thousands of data points. Sensible, simple metering strategy. Apply principles of IPMVP and set sensible measurement boundaries. Remember, as far as the client is concerned, if there isn't a headline reduction in consumption then the project has failed.They rarely care about "mitigating factors" unless you have agreed these up front.

A baseline is a requirement regardless of whether you implement projects to optimize energy usage because an accurate assessment of where you are is essential to knowing if that's a good place to be. You cannot move to point B if you do not know where Point A is.

“Data are just summaries of thousands of stories—tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.” ~ Dan Heath, bestselling author Monitoring & measuring of solutions is just another way of saying that the data tells a story and engaging actively in the data story is essential for effective decision-making. In most cases, companies do not know what they don't know. Company employees are often times reluctant to press for capital expenditures due to an inability to prove out ROI. This is why it's important to start with some high-level telemtry solutions that don't require the same type of approval as a CapEx budget. When you prove the benefits of a solution on a small scale, you can then push for more.

PMO to be defined with deliverables rather just process. Need to bring the right stakeholders/ team engagement at the different stages of the project implementation ( design, procurement, implementation and handing over)

Keep the solution simple! I spend a large portion of my working life looking at energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that have failed in service because they rely on solutions that are overly complex and not easy to understand for the maintenance contractor.

Monitoring is important to show the invisible, making data visible, in real time allows the engagement of stakeholders and is the only way to ensure behavior change.

Meters, sensors and dashboards are only useful in the hands of those who can do something with the data. If those personnel are not empowered to act your efforts are likely in vain.

The most important starting point is to determine what is it that decision-makers want from energy management, because it's rarely saving energy per se.

Internal reports are one thing but those that go outside of your organization are often far more useful as your industry will prosper from following your plans. The better everyone in your industry does the more likely your industry will be sustaining.

Reporting of results and success stories should not be just done internally. While benefits and savings are obtained by the company, one should adopt the principle of reciprocity. By sharing the results and improvements measures in industry conferences and sharings, one would enable others to learn from your projects. Similarly, best practices could be adopted from external sharing as well. This would also provide positive branding for corporate sustainbility.

Bring the performance assurance culture for every sub set of the project rather IST( integrated system testing). Well defined KPI help to identify gaps on “before and after” performance

Key take away in energy management is energy efficiency of your connected devices and this will lead us to deploying a energy tracker or monitoring system to track energy consumption.

Bring following success factors for any sustainable and successful energy management project: - decarbonisation levers - digitalisation levers - decentralisation levers - sustainable financing - change management - risk and governance - PMO and transformation management

Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. If the design / project /solution is too complex to maintain, or poorly documented then it will fail "in operation" within 6-12 months after handover. Also remember FM technicians and managers change roles FREQUENTLY. There is a high probability than within 3 years no one on site will know how "that thing in the corner" is supposed to work.

Not something that was top of my agenda when I started; one thing that we sometimes ‘forget’ when delivering energy efficiency projects is health and safety and user experience. Yes measurement and verification are important but we also need to consider the health and safety of the people installing the new equipment, as well as the health and safety and user experience of people using the equipment.

Success of any energy management project is to conduct Audit as defined in ASHRE1.2,3 guidelines , create a design and built implementation strategy for implementing ECM, instill an a 5-7 years measurement verification strategy , mitigate risk by guaranteed savings and investment . Collect all relevant plant data and change the operational set points intelligently by using AI tools and aim for net zero or near zero utility consumption vision . Also, a capability in cloud computing power will definitely harness the energy optimization, fault diagnostic and identity the energy leakage or deviation from the baseline or static factors .

Energy management projects start with data and resources usage trend of existing system and continue to improve upon its efficiency factor with constant data monitoring of the usage with respect to baseline before/after scenarios, there on for consistency of the system improvement done. Biggest value lesson would be in engaging with right champion/champions on making this improvement a reality and the satisfaction it gives upon delivering the intended output is second to nothing. Core of any energy management project is at the sensible dissection of usage patterns and trends for better quality output. Commercial plays only a minor part if the project impact is straight forward and almost tangible.