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Advances in metering technology are allowing FM companies to collect large amounts of detailed utility consumption data for their estates. Steve Wright, Managing Director of Optima Energy, discusses how this potential torrent of data brings new challenges as well as some additional unforeseen benefits.
What are the key areas that need to be addressed in an energy management strategy?
What is the best way to manage large quantities of data usefully?
Facilities managers will be very aware that energy has become a key issue for most organisations over the past four years. Managing energy provides significant benefits to any organisation by reducing waste, cutting costs and improving profits, as well as helping the environment by reducing carbon emissions.
There are four key areas that need to be addressed as part of an overall energy management strategy:
- Buy energy at the best price through effective procurement, either by timing when contracts are renewed or utilising flexible purchasing contracts.
- Only pay for what you use by checking the supplier invoices, which industry sources indicate to have errors of 3 per cent by value.
- Only use what you need to by monitoring energy use and setting targets and benchmarks to eliminate waste. Government figures suggest savings of between 5-25 per cent are achievable.
- Understand and control costs by setting accurate budgets and tracking them through the year.
For many years, cheap energy meant that most organisations only addressed the first two, which provided easy quick wins. However the increase in energy prices over recent years have meant that there has been an increase in the awareness of saving energy through effective use, as well as understanding and controlling costs by making people aware and responsible for the energy that they use.
One of the fundamentals of energy management, attributed to Lord Kelvin, is that: "In order to manage you must first measure." In terms of energy management this is implemented through a technique knows as Automatic Monitoring and Targeting (aM&T). aM&T is a structured approach to energy management that provides a simple yet powerful technique for identifying inefficient performance and eliminating waste.
Advances in metering technology, available at lower prices, mean that it is now very cost-effective to implement metering solutions that automate the collection of utility data for even the most widespread of estates.
Many FM companies are already collecting large amounts of data for their estates, either directly from meters or through their building management systems. By using the right software package, it is a seamless process to load this data automatically so that it can be analysed and used to identify the performance of buildings.
Whilst storing all this data is not a problem these days with ever faster computers and larger hard drives, making use of the data in a sensible and timely fashion becomes much more difficult as volumes increase. Spreadsheets are a great tool for ad-hoc analysis but fall down as volumes of data increase.
The key to managing mountains of data usefully is structure. A well-organised database that combines all data types (electricity, gas, water, steam, heat, oil etc.) makes it easy to store and retrieve this data and apply powerful analysis tools, in a fraction of the time taken by a plethora of spreadsheets.
Setting targets and benchmarks to identify energy waste and poor performance is a key part of any energy management programme, and again a dedicated software package can provide this with a huge time saving over manual systems.  Figure 1. Consumption analysis and targeting.
However, regression analysis (Figure 2) is established as the preferred method for setting targets, since it provides a detailed picture of previous energy performance compared against the drivers that affect its usage, typically degree days for buildings. By using a sophisticated software package it is easy to eliminate rogue data points, and fine-tune the targets to set aggressive but achievable targets. Where a building management system is installed it is often possible to obtain daily degree day figures so that daily targets can be set to identify energy waste as soon as possible.
 Figure 2. Regression analysis.
Whilst aM&T provides the functionality to analyse the performance of a building against itself, the next step is to start benchmarking the performance against its peers. By calculating key performance indices (KPIs) it is possible to produce league tables to identify the best and worst performers, so that time and resources can be prioritised to investigate the most inefficient buildings first. Specific energy consumption based on area, volume, or even numbers of occupants shows some revealing aspects of how efficiently they are operated.
One of the other added benefits of more accurate metered data for utilities is that it becomes easy to create accurate invoices for tenants within the estate. The metered data can be utilised together with tariff rates set by the facilities manager to automatically create invoices in bulk. This enables the facilities manager or client to recharge tenants or departments for exactly the energy or water that they have used, and at a cost that reflects the true cost of supply. This not only provides the incentive to reduce consumption through more careful use of resources, but also ensures that costs are attributed on an equitable basis.
Managing the data for managing utilities is a major task for most organisations. With the right software in place it is possible to leverage the investment in metering and building management systems to make sure that the right outputs and information are delivered to the right people in a timely fashion with a minimum of effort. |
