Energy Management System: What It Is, What It's For, and How to Choose the Right One
More and more companies are taking a close look at their energy consumption. The sustained rise in energy prices, pressure to cut costs, and the need to move toward more sustainable models have put Energy Management Systems (SGEn) at the center of the conversation. But what exactly are they, and how do you choose the right one for your company?
What Is an Energy Management System
An Energy Management System is the part of a company's strategy dedicated to monitoring, analyzing, and managing its energy consumption with the goal of gaining efficiency. In practice, this means having a tool capable of collecting consumption data, turning it into useful information, and helping make decisions that reduce both energy and financial costs.
Advantages of Having an Energy Management System
It Detects Cost Overruns and Anomalies
Knowing your energy consumption in real time makes it possible to identify cost overruns, deviations, or anomalies, and to address their root causes. This could be an improperly sized contracted power capacity, residual consumption outside of production hours, HVAC inefficiencies, or equipment that needs maintenance. A good energy management system captures all of this.
It Helps Control Consumption
Software connected to your energy management system lets you see consumption peaks and distribute loads to avoid exceeding your contracted power capacity, along with the extra costs that would bring. It also makes it easier to detect and eliminate residual consumption, which in turn simplifies maintenance.
It Generates Alerts for Deviations
These systems can automatically send alerts when abnormal consumption or equipment deterioration is detected, and those alerts can be assigned to the team member responsible for resolving them.
It Enables Automation
Scheduling equipment on/off cycles, generating alerts for unexplained changes in usual consumption patterns, or managing backup systems in the event of a power outage are just a few examples of what a good energy management system can automate.
The most advanced systems, like the ones Smarkia offers, run in the cloud and don't require installing any additional hardware — they connect to the metering equipment the organization already has and are accessible from any internet-connected device, which considerably reduces setup costs.
How to Choose the Right Energy Management System
First and foremost, it's important to be clear about which consumption points you want to monitor and what metering equipment the organization already has. This helps size the project and understand which environmental conditions — such as temperature, humidity, or weather — might affect the results.
Look for Flexibility and Accessibility
Once you know what's available on the market, it makes sense to choose a flexible tool that doesn't depend on any specific hardware and that can scale as the company grows, including managing multiple sites.
Prioritize Real-Time Monitoring
The advantage of real-time monitoring over waiting for the bill to arrive is that it allows continuous tracking of the savings measures you've put in place. To get the most out of it, the tool should let you customize reports and build dashboards tailored to each user's goals.
Make Sure It Supports Regulatory Compliance
In Europe, a large share of large companies are required to carry out periodic energy audits. In Spain, this obligation is set out under Real Decreto 56/2016, and companies that implement and certify an energy management system in line with ISO 50001 are exempt from the periodic audit. In the United States there's no equivalent requirement, but the Department of Energy promotes ISO 50001 adoption through its 50001 Ready program, a free path — with no external audit required — for implementing a structured energy management system. Choosing a platform built to track ISO 50001 requirements makes this process much easier, whatever your country's regulatory framework.
Choose a Customizable Tool
When it comes to monitoring, choosing the right tracking indicators is essential. It's best to run an analysis that accounts for baseline consumption and the variables that influence it, avoiding indicators that can lead to misleading conclusions, as sometimes happens with simple ratios. A good system should also let you project future savings based on baselines, factoring in external variables like production levels or weather.
An Example: Smarkia's Cloud Platform
Energy efficiency essentially comes down to reducing energy consumption by optimizing how it's used. The biggest energy consumers tend to be industrial companies, so much of the energy management solutions available are built around production processes: calculating real-time consumption, forecasting future consumption, and identifying the potential for improvement in each activity.
That measurement relies on sensors, meters, or energy meters that send information to the management system. Smarkia, for example, is a monitoring platform that reads data from any meter the organization already has, with no need to install additional hardware or take on the costs that would involve.
Beyond monitoring consumption, having a tool like this helps companies make progress toward compliance with standards like ISO 50001, whether in Spain, the rest of Europe, or the United States.
Want to find out how an Energy Management System can help you reduce your consumption and costs? Reach out to us and we'll show you how we can help.