Energy Management to reduce your consumption and costs

What is Energy Management?

The Energy Management System (EMS)

• Energy resources team:
  To ensure the proper functioning of the EMS, it is essential to form a dedicated energy management team. This team should consist of members with technical expertise, project management skills, as well as a deep understanding of the organization’s processes.
  Energy monitoring and energy audits should help set achievable performance targets for each KPI, with a detailed action plan based on available resources (budget, time, etc.).

• Monitoring and continuous improvement:
  Once the EMS is implemented, the energy team must establish template documents and team routines to maintain constant monitoring of energy performance. This includes regularly tracking KPIs, proactively detecting anomalies in water and energy consumption, effectively deploying the developed action plan, and systematically verifying the achievement of set objectives. In case of non-compliance or insufficient performance, corrective actions must be quickly implemented to address the identified anomalies. This monitoring and adjustment process ensures continuous improvement of the organization’s energy performance.

• Annual review and adjustment of the action plan:
  Each year, a review meeting is organized to evaluate the deployment of the energy action plan and the performance achieved. This meeting allows for verifying whether the objectives have been met, analyzing the management of detected anomalies to ensure that they have all been properly addressed or closed, and defining a new action plan with updated targets. This process also includes the update of the overall master plan for the factory or the sobriety plan, ensuring that the long-term energy strategy remains aligned with the organization’s goals.

For the effective operation of an EMS within a plant or organization, it is essential to establish training and awareness plans for the teams regarding the Energy Management strategy. Internal and external reporting are also effective ways to highlight developments and engage all collaborators in a virtuous company project!

It is essential for each industrial site to implement an energy management approach (EMS) to improve its energy performance. However, for an industrial group with multiple sites, it is crucial to adopt a centralized approach to avoid fragmented efforts and maximize synergies between sites. Unlike the local approach to energy management, energy management at the group level focuses on the coherence of actions and strategic alignment. Here are the key actions to be taken:

• Definición de los Indicadores de Rendimiento Energético (IPE) para la elaboración de informes y benchmarks: Utilities such as water and energy, as well as industrial processes, are often similar within a group. However, different KPIs are frequently observed across sites. By standardizing the KPIs at the group level, it becomes possible to structure reporting coherently, facilitating comparisons and benchmarks. This standardization allows for easier identification of performance gaps and the deployment of effective corrective actions.

• Methodological framework for site energy management: To facilitate energy management at the group level, it is relevant to adopt a unified methodology for all sites. This includes the use of routines, tools, and standard documents. A unified approach not only simplifies management but also helps create a common energy culture, accelerates the adoption of best practices, and ensures continuous improvement of energy performance across all sites.

• Establishment of Technological Guidelines: Factories are often faced with technical recommendations from local actors, which can lead to heterogeneous and sometimes biased technological choices. By establishing technological guidelines at the group level, these risks are minimized by ensuring consistency in the equipment and solutions implemented. This technical coherence promotes better control of installations, simplifies the technical management of factories, and strengthens the overall energy performance of the group.

• Technological monitoring to stay at the forefront of best practices: Technology is evolving rapidly, and it is crucial for an industrial group to stay informed about innovations and best practices in energy management. Continuous technological monitoring helps detect new energy optimization opportunities and integrate emerging technologies quickly across the group’s sites.

• Challenging the action plans of the sites and consolidating a global action plan: To ensure that local initiatives align with the group’s global strategy, it is necessary to regularly challenge the action plans of the sites. This approach ensures that the actions taken are in line with the group’s decarbonization roadmap. Consolidating local action plans into a global plan guarantees a harmonized approach, with clear and measurable objectives at the group level.

• Facilitating workgroups and sharing best practices: Connecting energy teams from different factories is crucial for creating a knowledge-sharing dynamic. Organizing workgroups not only helps disseminate best practices but also creates tailored technical resources, thereby enhancing the skills of teams at each site. This facilitation fosters a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement within the group, which is essential for achieving ambitious energy goals.

In industry, implementing an effective energy management system is a complex and time-consuming task. To simplify and optimize this process, many industrial companies turn to specialized software solutions. While an EMS (Energy Management Software) allows for tracking energy consumption, reporting on KPIs, and performing basic analyses, it is often limited to these functions. On the other hand, EMOS (Energy Management and Optimization Software) goes well beyond simple reporting.

An EMOS is a powerful and comprehensive tool that unites the operational needs of all departments within the company concerning water and energy management. It offers an extensive range of specific functionalities, such as advanced modeling of equipment on an industrial site, energy purchasing, demand response, cost accounting, and collaborative applications for team-based work. Unlike an EMS, which primarily focuses on data visualization, the EMOS integrates advanced analytical tools that not only detect anomalies but also propose optimized solutions to achieve the best possible energy and environmental performance. Additionally, the EMOS standardizes indicators and work methodologies from one site to another, thus facilitating collaborative management aligned with a global decarbonization strategy.

Ultimately, effective energy management at the site level requires the implementation of an EMOS software. This tool does more than just collect and present data; it also provides integrated expertise and practical solutions to simplify energy management, enable informed decision-making, and facilitate the implementation of corrective actions in compliance with ISO 50001 standards.