SOMANCO – Energy Management

Energy Management has become one of the most critical issues of our time. Unfortunately, most organizations do not take action in this area because they do not have the tools to measure energy usage in real time, and they are not aware of the options for alternative actions.

Success comes from installing the right systems to monitor usage, identify issues, and provide information for people to take actions to achieve savings. Advanced solutions provide modeling and decision support capabilities to identify additional opportunities for savings.

Customer case studies generating savings in the millions of dollars are not uncommon, in facilities and in industrial operations.

The SOMANCO Energy Management solution offers these resources to address opportunities around energy usage and conservation –

• Engineers to assess the situation and design the solution

• Personnel to install the infrastructure components of the solution

• Software solutions to collect, analyze and present usage data

• Software solutions to provide decision support for optimization

• Consultants to establish the project scope and the manage the implementation

• Continuing services for post implementation review, ongoing support and annual performance review

Case Studies and Success Stories -

• Major university reduces energy consumption by 15% with real time data collection feeding an Energy Management Information System (EMIS). Using the  principles of Measure - Interpret - React, the EMIS now provides visibility of all electrical consumption on campus, together with historical trending, enabling corrective actions to be taken, and providing a platform for real time decision support.

• Industrial complex reduces energy costs by millions of dollars by using a real time data collection system to collect, store and analyze energy data. Meters were installed on all electrical mains to measure usage, and another set of meters were installed to measure other relevant properties (temperatures, pressures, flows, weather conditions, etc). This data is continually summarized and presented to operators throughout the facility enabling them to take appropriate actions. 

• Paper company saves $1 million in electrical costs with new Energy Management Information System (EMIS) and a predictive model for Energy Management. Data on generation and consumption was collected in real time from 6 operating facilities and summarized into a central system along with real time data on energy prices and weather conditions. With this information all in one place, and visible in real time, operators made decisions on load shedding and balancing, including the decision as to when to make paper versus selling power to the grid.

• You don’t have to own or manage a data center to know that the amount of digital data being stored, shared, manipulated, processed, analyzed, reported, downloaded, uploaded, emailed, backed up and restored is growing fast—as much as 25 to 50 percent a year, by some estimates. In the first decade of the new millennium, we are likely to see a 600 percent increase in server installations and storage expanding nearly 70 times over. This exuberant growth comes at a price. Many data centers, including most of those built before 2001, are at risk of outstripping their capacity to power and cool all these IT systems. Already, data centers consume 10 to 30 times more energy per square foot than the typical office building—a figure that has doubled in the last five years. Energy costs represent the single largest component of operating expense, and a potential barrier to future expansion. Major corporations today are saving over $1 million in data center energy costs by using a real time Energy Management System.

• The energy efficiency surveys were designed to break down facility-level energy use into its component parts, with an emphasis on identifying ways to improve energy efficiency and reduce cost. Additionally, energy best practices were identified and documented for the purposes of sharing these practices with other sites. All data was entered into a central system, enabling the tracking of projects, practices and the corporate aggregate energy and greenhouse gas reduction potential. Based on this effort, a ten-year goal for energy efficiency savings capture was set at $400 million. Energy efficiency implementation actions are underway and associated carbon baseline reduction is projected to exceed 5% corporately.