Organizations are becoming more intensively conscious about energy related-topics. The overall societal recognition, changing legal requirements and cost reduction pressure results in increasing interests in holistic energy management activities well embedded into the overall facilities management (FM) context.
The paper summarizes achievements of an industry-led R&D-project executed by the first author (industry) under the supervision of the co-authors (university and industry). The paper aims to specify energy invoice process for implementing Energy Management Systems (EMS) to extract related data from energy invoices for multi-site organizations. During earlier field studies and literature review it is found that a diverse, inhomogeneous spectrum of energy data for EMS purposes exists in FM-organizations. In the majority of the cases the authors identified a need for a structured, strategic approach to the implementation of EMSs compared to the currently practiced ‘ad-hoc’ activities.
Therefore, in this paper the authors present a methodology to compile, store and analyze energy management data for multi-site organizations. Firstly, the authors shortly discuss the legal background (including EED article 8 and ISO 50001) to assist the reader with better understanding of those reasons why the implementation of EMS is important. Subsequently, the information’ acquisition processes for EMS are defined. Thirdly, new models and information analysis processes are presented. Finally, the authors present a proof of concept based on the example of energy invoice processing. The example is chosen to highlight a great potential for process optimization with respect to energy management standard ISO 50001. Current data acquisition activities are neither standardized nor structured. The authors argue that through newly designed information models and data analysis activities the processing of energy invoices can be optimized, the number of ‘ad-hoc’ developed interfaces can be dramatically reduced, the ‘lead-in times’ to offer energy transparency (technical and accounting) can be shortened. Through the increased efficiency of energy management processes the potential to deliver energy management services will be faster, more seamless and sustainable. Moreover, so called ‘non-energy intensive’ organizations with numerous energy invoices can identify their overall energy consumption more easily.
Future research of the first author will include the identification of other energy processes for holistic systems’ management ensuring legal compliance of energy management Standards.
A_Methodology_for_Transparent_Energy_Management_Processes_in_Multi-Site_Organizations.pdf 