Saving Energy Step 5 – Bringing it together

We hope you have been enjoying our series of short posts regarding saving energy, so what we use we can sustain. We have tried to make a dry subject interesting. After you read this post please comment, and tell us how it went. We are in the environment together. As the man who wrote ?No Man is an Island? said, ?if a clod be washed away somewhere by the sea, Europe is the less? and Europe was his entire world.

The 4 Steps we wrote about previously have a multiplier effect when we harness them together

  1. Having a management system diffuses office politics and pins accountability in a way that not even a worm could wriggle
  2. This defines the boundaries for senior managers and empowers them to implement practical improvements with confidence
  3. The results feed back into lower energy bills: this convinces the organisation that more is possible
  4. This dream filters through all levels of the organisation, as a natural team forms to make work and home a better place.

None of this would be possible without measuring energy consumption throughout the process, converting this into meaningful analytics, and playing ?what-if? scenarios against each other to determine where to start.

The 5th Step to Energy Saving that brings the other four together can double the individual benefits as innovative power flows between them. The monetary savings are impressive and provide capital to go even further. Why not allow us to help you manage what we measure together.

ecoVaro turns your numbers into meaningful analytics, makes suggestions, and stays with you so we can quantify your savings as you make them. We should talk about this soon.

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Uncover hidden opportunities with energy data analytics

What springs to mind when you hear the words energy data analytics? To me, I feel like energy data analytics is not my thing. Energy data analytics, however, is of great importance to any organisation or business that wants to run more efficiently, reduce costs, and increase productivity. Energy efficiency is one of the best ways to accomplish these goals.

Energy efficiency is not about investment in expensive equipment and internal reorganization. Enormous energy saving opportunities is hidden in already existing energy data. Given that nowadays, energy data can be recorded from almost any device, a lot of data is captured regularly and therefore a lot of data is readily available.

Organisations can use this data to convert their buildings’ operations from being a cost centre to a revenue centre through reduction of energy-related spending which has a significant impact on the profitability of many businesses. All this is possible through analysis and interpretation of data to predict future events with greater accuracy. Energy data analytics therefore is about using very detailed data for further analysis, and is as a consequence, a crucial aspect of any data-driven energy management plan.

The application of Data and IT could drive significant cost savings in company-owned buildings and vehicle fleets. Virtual energy audits can be performed by combining energy meter data with other basic data about a building e.g. location, to analyse and identify potential energy savings opportunities. Investment in energy dashboards can further enable companies to have an ongoing look at where energy is being consumed in their buildings, and thus predict ways to reduce usage, not to mention that energy data analytics unlock savings opportunities and help companies to understand their everyday practices and operating requirements in a much more comprehensive manner.

Using energy data analytics can enable an organisation to: determine discrepancies between baseline and actual energy data; benchmark and compare previous performance with actual energy usage. Energy data analytics also help businesses and organisations determine whether or not their Building Management System (BMS) is operating efficiently and hitting the targeted energy usage goals. They can then use this data to investigate areas for improvement or energy efficient upgrades. When energy data analytics are closely monitored, companies tend to operate more efficiently and with better control over relevant BMS data.

Article 8 of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive ? Orientation

Following in-depth discussion of the UK?s ESOS response, we decided to backtrack to the source, especially since every EU member is facing similar challenges. The core purpose of the directive is to place a pair of obligations on member states. These are

  1. To promote the availability of energy audits among final customers in all sectors, and;
  2. To ensure that enterprises that are not SMEs carry out energy audits at least every four years.

Given the ability for business to look twice at every piece of legislation it considers unproductive, the Brussels legislators took care to define what constitutes an enterprise larger than an SME.

Definition of a Large Undertaking

A large undertaking meets one or both of the following conditions:

  1. It employs 250 or more people
  2. Its annual turnover is more than ?50 million and its balance sheet total exceeds ?43 million

Rules for Energy Audits

If accredited / qualified in-house specialists are unavailable then independent experts should supervise audits. The talent shortage seems common to many EU businesses. In hindsight, the Union could have ramped up slower, especially since the first compliance date of 5 December 2015 does not leave much swing room.

ecoVaro doubts there was a viable alternative, given the urgent imperative to beat back the scourge of carbon that is threatening the viability of our planet. The legislators must have been of a similar mind when laying down the guidelines. Witness for example the requirement that penalties be ?effective, proportionate and dissuasive?.

In order to be compliant, an energy audit must

  1. Be based on twelve months of verifiable data that is
    • over a continuous period beginning no more than 24 months before the beginning of the energy audit, and;
    • identifies energy saving opportunities including paths to their achievement
  2. Analyse the participant’s energy consumption and energy efficiency
  3. Have not been used as the basis for an energy audit in a previous compliance period

Measurement of current status and progress tracing are at the core of energy saving and good governance generally. EcoVaro has a powerhouse of software tools available on the cloud to help project teams save time and money.

Quality Assurance

 

There is a truism that goes “The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory”.

While every consumer can probably relate to this idea, business enterprises offering goods and services are the ones that should heed this the most.

Quality Management Systems

The concept of quality was first introduced in the 1800’s. Goods were then still mass-produced, created by the same set of people, with a few individuals assigned to do some “tweaking” on the product to bring it to acceptable levels. Their idea of quality at that time may not have been that well-defined, but it marked the beginnings of product quality and customer satisfaction as we know it now.

Since then, quality has developed into a very basic business principle that every organisation should strive to achieve. Yet while every business recognises the importance of offering product and service quality, it is not something that can be achieved overnight.

If you’ve been in any type of business long enough, you should know that there is no “quick-fix” to achieving quality. Instead, it is an evolving process that needs to be continually worked on. And this is where the importance of having a workable Quality Management System (QMS) in an organisation comes in.

Whatever Quality tools and processes you need to implement the change needed in your organisation, we can help you with it. We are ready to work in partnership with your team to develop strategic systems which will produce significant performance improvements geared towards the achievement of quality.

What is a Quality Management System?

A Quality Management System is defined as the set of inter-related objectives, processes, and operating procedures that organisations use as a guide to help them implement quality policies and attain quality objectives.

Needless to say, the ultimate goal of every quality management system is to establish quality as a core value of the company among all employees, and across all products and services. Why? Because quality services make for happy customers, and satisfied customers ensure continued business for the company.

A Quality Management System does not stop with simply having a set of guidelines that the leaders of a company can easily have their organisation members accept and adhere to. Rather, effective QMS can be implemented when management provides a culture of pride and patience, which will inspire acceptance of individual and group responsibility.

In this manner, not only the heads of the organisation but the employees as well, will develop the desire to achieve company goals that will benefit:

  • All contributing teams;
  • The customers; and
  • The company as a whole.

Find out more about our Quality Assurance services in the following pages:

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