Energy Management is a Journey

Over the last 40 years of my career I can say about 'the journey' because I have seen policies come and go, technologies come and go and even seen practices come and go. But it is strange how some of those always stick in my mind like the U.K Government's campaign of SAVE IT, we would see these stickers and signs everywhere. But you never see them today. This campaign I think was so old before the internet was even dreamed of.

Over my career of selling energy services I would always find myself sitting with an organisation’s decision maker and they would be explaining how they need sub metering, new lighting and they need to change their BMS. It has not always been easy process to slow them down because jumping into these areas so quickly just is not the right way to approach energy management. There can be significant amount of money spent before this is realised.

My thoughts on this is that “Energy Management is a journey” and in my opinion there is a clear process to follow. I have seen many people spend significant amount of money on systems and they are then wondering why they can not see the savings.

To provide some details on this, I was once invited to property less than 5-Years-old where they had explained to me that the BMS was obsolete and they needed to invest ￡300k to install a new system. After a 30-minute review I actual convinced them to deploy some training and re-position the computer system for the sum of ￡10,000 and they got their system back on track securing significant savings.

I believe that energy management programs can take place over a period of 4 to 5 Years with Year 1 focusing on data management and behaviour changes and really focusing on the systems already in place, year two would be to focus on enhancing those systems, year three focusing on capital expenditure. Then lastly year 4 is about measurement and verification.

In 2009 I embarked on a very large property portfolio where very quickly we had a good understanding what needed to be done. After our initial assessment we started to create a roadmap.

The project was a complete success and still today the organisaion is managing their energy daily. We also provided them with legislation support. It was an amazing journey and the client was saving in the region of ￡400,000 each year and year on year. The model works very well and each time a technology was implemented a complete review was provided. The impact on the organisation regarding this journey was significant with savings and no headaches.

The below diagram shows the roadmap and shows how each technology compliments each other, rather than installing all the systems at once and creating conflict.

Through the years of this program there was opportunities to implement Carbon Trust Accreditation, CRC, ESOS and SECR.

A good example for conflict would be to install a Combine Heat and Power (CHP) from day 1. Which is great for making savings. However, if the contracts are already in place within the building for 3 to 4 years, the organisation could be subjected to minimum or maximum take penalties. These could be significant. In addition, if you have installed the CHP before installing LEDs you could end up with control issues on the CHP.

I always try to model the energy consumption which we have done with the data before and show the impact of each energy management project to be implemented. It adds great value to help you evaluate the projects together. 

Energy management is a journey, and we need to put together a flexible project plan that lets us take 'baby steps' towards making significant savings without impacting the failure of each individual project. The project can be modelled but it is far easier to implement each project in an order.

If you enjoyed reading this article or you want to provide feedback, please contact Paul Webb at www.b2benergy.co.uk or send him a Direct Message, he will respond within 24 Hours.

The principles of this article comes from my first book which is called “Becoming an Energy Expert” this is a very exciting time for us where we will be launching our new B2B Energy Experts Website full of Energy Insights and the start of a book ‘Trilogy’

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