The Power of Energy Intelligence Software:Enterprise Energy Optimization

All of us have often seen the lights on in a skyscraper at midnight or have entered  freezing-cold hotel rooms and instantly what comes to our mind is that these buildings are prodigious wasters of energy. But, many of these problems can be identified and solved just by  analyzing the right datasets.

Commercial buildings account for more than 30% of total energy consumption in most of the cities across the world and are responsible for more than 30% of CO2 emissions. Expenditure on energy also accounts for about 33% of their operational expense. The challenge is not in taking an apt action to reduce power bills and carbon footprint rather the challenge lies in managing data, drawing intelligent insights from data and taking action based on these insights at the time when it matters the most. What if the facility managers are equipped to track, monitor and visualize energy consumption in real time and take action when it could make a difference, thus ensuring lower utility bills and reduced carbon footprint.

It would be possible only if the facility managers had answers to these simple yet important questions:

Building’s schedule:

What time does the building start, has peak activity and stop?

Is the schedule same on all days- Monday to Sunday?

Is the schedule same in all seasons throughout the year?

Building’s baseload:

Which equipments/ HVAC systems/ AHUs/ Utility pumps operate during the day and at night?

What is operating on the weekends and on weekdays?

Which devices are included in the baseload?

Is the building’s baseload too high? How does it compare with the rest of the buildings?

How is the load profile? What are the high and the low points of the baseload?

Heating and Cooling:

How much cooling or heating is required and when?

Today, with the advent of smart metering and sub-metering to device level coupled with big data real-time analytics, the facility manager has got access to a powerful engine for real time operational efficiency and system performance management. Essentially, the move from metered buildings to monitored buildings by means of a real time energy analytics software could empower the management to measure every system and operation running in the facility and correlate their financial goals with their energy goals. Real-time energy data provides true insight into operation, thus opening a plethora of opportunities to save energy, save money and reduce their carbon footprint.

Opportunities that open up through Granular Energy Monitoring

Granular visibility combined with analytics and actionable  insights enables organizations to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. As for example monitoring energy at device level can detect an incorrect scheduling in the Building Management System itself.

Prevent unexpected failure or breakdown of devices, equipment and systems. and do a predictive maintenance. Identifying unexpected behaviour of devices and predicting failures can save a substantial amount of money and prevent wastage of energy.

A number of systems are interrelated in any facility. But, before big data, facility managers could not discover multiple system failures or inefficiencies simultaneously. As for example a leak in the Air Handling Unit and the malfunctioning of the condensate pump could be correlated.  Now that facility manager has access to data on the device level, she/he is able to tie these problems together and solve those efficiently.

Energy Benchmarking is another benefit of big data analytics and real time energy dashboard. For a multi-site organization spread over different cities and countries, a real time analysis and monitoring on cloud helps them compare and benchmark their facilities against each other. In fact, a real time monitoring could eliminate the need of employing energy auditor services that are typically done once in a year or so and acting upon the recommendations that might take another half a year.

A real time monitoring and alerts generated by an energy intelligence software drives behavioural changes and behavioural changes backed by granular energy data in real time helps employees see the positive effect of their actions  and celebrate their success, and of course, these then create long-term behavioural changes.

Hence, it is the right time for organizations to move from being  just Metered to Monitored.