Everything You Need To Know About Energy Management

Energy consumption is at an all-time high in present times. This is because we rely heavily on resources such as electricity and fuel. This can bring up a range of challenges. These include personal ones, such as dealing with hefty bills and bigger ones, like environmental degradation. It is in everyone’s interest that they may optimize energy consumption to minimize such challenges. This is the basis of energy management solutions. They aim to implement infrastructure within a building or organization that can track, control, and conserve energy consumption. Here is everything you need to know about it. 

What is Energy Management important?

Energy management is essential for a variety of reasons. These are: 

Conserving costs for your organization

Energy Management helps reduce your energy costs. These costs can represent up to a quarter of operating costs. Therefore, prioritizing them is in your best interest. The increased energy and maintenance costs can be due to asset energy inefficiency, lack of problem visibility, and equipment damage. This is especially the case with energy costs rising more than ever as time goes by. With the situation of COVID-19, saving costs is more crucial than ever for a business. Implementing energy management can help take care of this. It can also help reduce your company’s dependency on energy which can again help conserve costs in power outages.  

Reducing Environmental Damages

Energy consumption can help us control the damage that we inflict on the environment. This is done primarily through the reduction of carbon emissions into the air. It is our responsibility as human beings to look out for the environment, and this is one way to do so. Additionally, reducing carbon emissions can also help your organization promote a green and sustainable image. So, This can help attract customers who are looking to do business with responsible companies.   

What does Energy Management Involve?

You can sum up energy management into three steps which are: 

• Collection of Data
• Display of Information
• Making Decisions.

1. Collection of Data

Collection of Data involves using hardware installed strategically around the building to collect data. This hardware includes sensors and meters that can help provide energy data. We will talk about some of these devices to understand them. This will enable you to make use of them for your energy management solutions. 

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Digital Ammeters can be used to monitor current status that is compatible with AC and DC. Nippen provides a variety of these ammeters with models such as DA1, DA3, and DV1 DV3. They also provide voltmeters with various features such as multiple connection inputs and memory retention for many years. EM3060 is one such model that can be ideal for monitoring voltage. Honeywell energy metering solutions also deserve a shoutout in this aspect.

Data collection is not restricted to meters, however, and also requires other infrastructure. This includes panels and distribution boards as installation places. Using Modbus RS 485, the information can be transmitted over serial lines to an IoT Device (ST-11). This device can then transmit the data wirelessly to a remote server that acts as a cloud. Software applications can then access this data and turn it into information to display to users. This is where the second step comes into play. 

2. Display of Information

Applications developed for energy management can easily integrate with a cloud device to access the data provided by the hardware. These applications can help make sense of this information and convert it into useful information displayed in various ways. Here are some of the ways they can help: 

• They can provide real-time consumption performance to an organization by providing trends, effective energy utilization rates, and equipment performance monitoring.
• So they can also help deal with tariff optimization by analyzing and comparing load-shift optimization and load shedding predictions.
• They can provide energy usage broadcast solutions by providing various alerts, reports, and statuses. These include daily consumption reports, tariff reports, energy utilization reports. They can also provide equipment statuses and any relevant alerts. 

Hovereve, the information can be vital for organizations to make various decisions and develop solutions for their energy consumption. This is where the third and final step comes in. 

3. Making Decisions

This is where the practicality of energy management comes into play. It involves using human expertise to look at the information displayed by applications. They can use this to come up with solutions. More modern management solutions make use of big data analytics to come up with the best solution. Histograms and tables can help people understand the spread of data. Additionally, you can use visual alert systems to isolate any fault in systems so you can fix them and conserve energy. Implementing machine learning AI can help as it can provide real-time advice quickly. This will ensure your organization can dedicate more time to other tasks while conserving energy. 

In conclusion

Energy management is a crucial factor for businesses and organizations to consider. This is for two primary purposes as it helps them save costs and fulfil their responsibility of protecting the environment. You can do this through three main steps. These are: collecting data through hardware, converting it into information to display, and making decisions according to it. We have also talked about some of the hardware involved to have an idea of some products you can implement. We hope this helps you in the conservation of your energy.