Energy Management System: What, Why, and How?

Quick Summary: Industries are making adaptations to their processes to reduce carbon emissions and the consumption of non-renewable energy, which are one of the biggest reasons for climate change. Organizations need to manage their energy consumption to lower the impact on the environment. They can tackle this challenge by creating an energy management system. Here, we have highlighted the benefits of an energy management system and its role in minimizing carbon footprints.

Energy is the fuel of industries that drive production and processes. In light of global environmental concerns, organizations have unprecedented pressure to decrease their carbon footprints. To achieve that goal, they have to reduce their energy consumption.

A study from the National Library of Medicine, USA, suggests that the 1% of energy consumption leads to 1.077% increase in the degradation of environment. Another pressure they have is the rising price of energy resources, forcing them to optimize their usage of energy to minimize costs.

Considering these reasons, companies have to make vital decisions and choices to achieve optimal use of energy. Making the right choices and decisions requires data and analysis. Energy Management System (EMS) allows companies to manage and track the usage of energy resources like electricity.

It’s a computer-aided system that uses software. So, companies can invest in software development to build an EMS that will allow them to control their energy consumption and help lower carbon emissions. Keep reading to understand how an EMS is helpful for organizations to meet their environmental commitments.

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A Quick Overview of Energy Management System (EMS)

An EMS is a collection of tools that are guided by computer systems. It is a system of software and tools that can help organizations manage, control, and measure their energy consumption. The system helps organizations to optimize their usage of energy.

Benefits of Energy Management Systems

EMS offers lots of benefits to organizations, allowing them to manage their energy resources efficiently and fulfill their environmental commitments. Check the key benefits of an EMS as follows.

Reduced Costs

Implementing an energy management system software can substantially decrease your operational costs. The system constantly tracks the consumption of energy through a specific time. You can utilize this data to determine your energy usage, which helps you in cost predictions. You can save a significant amount of money by making the right decision. It can help you reduce operational costs by optimizing your energy consumption.

Better Control

Managers can quickly respond to alerts and optimize energy consumption with the data and visualization. Well-designed energy control systems help companies handle many kinds of operations from a single point. Companies can pinpoint problems and quickly resolve them.

Efficiency

You can take a software development initiative to build a system that can analyze your energy needs and help you align the use with your requirements. Your custom energy management solution can help you identify the inconsistent, excessive, or unnecessary use of energy and fix this problem. Thus, it promotes efficient use of energy.

Evaluation

An alternative way to lower the impact on the environment is by shifting to renewable energy. However, companies need a proper evaluation before they can move to alternate energy sources. EMS is useful in this process as it can help companies examine the risks and opportunities with other energy sources through data and analytics.

Precise Data

A better understanding of your energy consumption at any point in time helps you make smart decisions. A smart energy management system provides you with periodic data about energy usage across your organization, enabling you to allocate energy resources optimally.

What are the Necessary Features of Energy Management Systems?

A comprehensive energy management software solution is capable of handling multiple aspects, including alerts, system monitoring, data visualization, and more. Hence, you need a software solution with a wide range of functionalities to efficiently manage your energy needs, no matter if it is used in offices, restaurants, buildings, or any other site.

Let’s see the key functionalities you must consider for energy management software development.

Connectivity with Devices

Tracking your devices and processes for excessive carbon emissions can help you make the right decisions. Here, you can leverage technology IoT (Internet of Things) that provides connectivity among devices. It can work with EMS to consolidate data collected from different devices. Every device will be connected to each other via IoT and exchange data mutually.

Monitoring and Tracking

There will be a single interface to access all information about your devices and processes with an energy management system. The data about energy usage is collected through meters and circuits being used across devices and processes. This data will help you monitor your energy apparatus and analyze trends in energy consumption.

Reporting and Analytics

The best energy management software provides detailed reports on the usage of energy. It can compare reports with historical data to help you decide success or failure. The software generates reports that comply with standards on carbon reporting. Analytics provides data for different estimates of energy. It also provides a visual representation through graphs and charts that make data more comprehensible.

Instant Notifications

You must have set a specific level for energy consumption that you don’t want to go beyond. Thankfully, EMS can help you avoid excessive use of energy. The alerting feature in an energy management system provides real-time notifications when your consumption level crosses the pre-determined energy levels.

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On-premises vs Cloud-based EMS

When it comes to the software development process, one question you will encounter for sure is where to host the software. Do you want an EMS with on-premises data centers or choose a modern approach with a cloud-based solution? While on-premises software solutions do have some benefits, they lack flexibility and advanced technologies, and releasing quick updates is hard.

Choosing a cloud-based energy management system offers advantages like reduced costs, scalability, flexibility, and more. It unlocks new opportunities for your business and leverages modern technologies.

How Do You Implement an Energy Management System?

You should create an EMS with the latest software development trends to leverage the advancements in technology. Once it’s developed, implementing it properly is also crucial to getting the best returns. It will help you achieve your energy goals with all the necessary information at your disposal to make informed decisions. Let’s see the steps to effectively implement an EMS for your organization.

Start With a Commitment

Make a commitment to continuous improvement with a well-defined environmental policy. You need a team that will implement the improvements at administrative and process levels.

Set Goals

Measuring success isn’t possible without defined parameters on which you will compare existing results to benchmark. Hence, set your goals for energy consumption and cut in emissions that will allow you to measure the success of your efforts with energy management.

Examine Performance

Regularly examining the performance of your energy management initiative enables you to determine whether you are meeting the specified goals or if you need further improvements. It lets you track your performance and align your activities according to the environmental policy. The data you obtain from the EMS will guide you to take the best steps to improve your performance.

Build an Action Plan

Having a proper action plan to meet the set objectives and stay on track is crucial to determining what steps you have to take if things are not aligned. There should be a proper framework to tackle problems and rectify them. This action plan allows the team to make the right decisions on time.

Renew Action Plan

Keep checking your action plan with periodic evaluations to ensure that it complies with the current standards. New regulations can be introduced over time that may compel you to redefine your action plan.

Know Your Achievements

When you are able to meet your goals successfully, you should acknowledge it and maintain your commitment. It will enable you to maintain a consistent performance and keep you motivated to attain your end goal.

What Will It Cost to Build an Energy Management System?

Complexity and features are the two main factors that affect the cost of developing an enterprise energy management system. So, the cost can vary and depends on the solution you want to build. Typically, the cost ranges from $50,000 - $80,000.

Moreover, these are just rough estimates, and the actual cost can be higher based on the energy goals you have set, the number of features, types of connected devices, and several other factors. Because energy management software is a comprehensive solution, it encompasses a wide range of operations.

The complexity of the software requires more time in development and implementation. Consequently, the cost is higher as you need a bigger team to handle the development process of your energy management solution. The location of the development team also affects the cost. You can outsource your software development project to software developers where cost is low, like in South Asia.

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Final NoteWith growing concerns over the environment around the world, minimizing the carbon footprint has become a priority for organizations. You can cut down your carbon emissions by optimizing energy consumption. Managing your energy resources and tracking consumption can help you determine your actual requirements and make the right decisions in this regard.For this, you need a feature-rich energy management system to track and manage your energy consumption. The diverse tools and features available with an EMS enable you to manage energy requirements to meet your environmental goals. If you want to develop an EMS, Radixweb can be the best technology partner for you.We specialize in software development services and have helped organizations implement effective strategies to reduce carbon emissions with the creation of a top-notch EMS. We have worked with many organizations in manufacturing, real estate, and other industries. Choose our custom software development services to develop a custom EMS for your organization.