How to Implement the Right Energy Management Approach for Your Building
Every year in the U.S., over $400 billion is spent annually on energy consumption in commercial and industrial buildings. Approximately 30% of energy used in these buildings is wasted. If you want to implement a proactive energy management approach for your company’s building, consider the following crucial steps that can take you from planning to implementation of the right plan for your facility.
1. Establish a Consumption Reference Point
In order to ascertain quantitative results of the gains you’ll be making in future energy savings, it is imperative that you begin by first establishing a reference point for your facility’s current energy consumption rate and all its inefficiencies. Energy Star is a great resource to find information on how to take action to save on energy costs, details on energy use intensity (EUI), a benchmark performance portfolio workbook, and details on creating your own energy efficiency competition.
2. Create Your Facility Energy Analysis
You need to create an energy analysis of your current building energy consumption for operational systems like water, lighting, cooling, heating, and workplace equipment. Detail whether your building uses electricity, natural gas, or oil for its source of energy. Make sure the analysis is extensive and specifically related to each operational system. The Energy Star user portfolio manager is extremely helpful in ensuring that you target every area that needs evaluation. To utilize this resource, you’ll need your energy bill information and basic company details. The portfolio manager can help classify your building type, compute metrics, decipher your results, validate and record results, and upload scoring information along with CBECS data to the Energy Star database.
3. Develop an Actionable Energy Plan
After you have the reference point and a completed analysis, you must develop an actionable energy management plan. You’ll need to assemble the key players to make this happen. These people should be committed team members and project managers who have the same enthusiasm and drive as you do to see this energy management plan implemented for your building. Create viable objectives for the short-term and long-range energy management future of your building. Ensure that your objectives are very detailed, quantifiable, assignable, practical, and have specific deadlines.
4. Trace, Quantify, Document, and Commemorate
The goals and progress should be tasked for periodic review and subject to adjustment as needed. For this energy management plan to remain viable, it is important that you carefully monitor and evaluate all data, and comprehensively document the analysis. Record energy usage and begin to specify decreases in greenhouse gases. As you see positive results unfolding, be sure to commemorate the success of your implemented energy management plan. Continue focusing on even better ways to save on energy costs. Keep motivating your management team and employees to do their part toward true energy efficiency.
Implementing and maintaining the right energy management plan for your building is possible with diligence and hard work, fused with intelligent technology. Keep working toward your goal of achieving energy efficiency for your building.
Faced with a new generation of workers, the extraordinary evolution of technology, and a growing demand to lower operating costs, today’s workspaces and business facilities are undergoing an unprecedented transformation. While each advancement creates new challenges, there is also a sea of opportunities to create greater efficiencies, reduce costs and enhance a building’s environment.
FuseMap has the capacity to create an automated environment that utilizes smart sensors to provide thousands of data points that can be quickly analyzed in order to recommend changes that can optimize building operations, save costs on energy, and create enhanced working conditions. Taking advantage of real-time data analytics, predictive analysis, machine learning and deep-learning technology, the power of FuseMap turns a simple building today into the smart building of tomorrow.
