What criteria do I use to select an energy management system?
Once a company makes the decision to procure an energy management system, affected employees are spoiled for choice. With over 400 providers, the market is not exactly clear. Companies are faced with the difficult questions: “What do I have to pay attention to?” and “Which is the right system for my requirements?”. We asked our customers which criteria were important to them when making their decision and would like to summarize the results below as a guide. These decision criteria have proven to be the most important for our customers: Cost, features, service and future viability.
A summary of the decision criteria
Particularly noteworthy here is the importance of cost in conjunction with the available features and the question “What do I get for my money?” In terms of features, interfaces and flexibility are the most important requirements, as some customers had to replace their entire system after a short time due to a lack of compatibility.
1. decision criterion – costs
To calculate costs, operations should realize that energy management is an iterative process: once initial data is visualized, some questions are answered and new questions are raised. Therefore, the costs should be plotted in a time series over the next 5-10 years. This is because both the number of meters and the number of users will increase every year.
External costs for the energy management system:
- Counter
- Software: usually there is a one-time payment and a monthly or annual maintenance/license fee
- Software commissioning
- Software training
- Data logger (if necessary): it must be checked whether the manufacturer requires additional gateways
- Server, operating system, hosting (if necessary): If hardware with operating system is not supplied, both must be provided by the customer. This always gobbles up a four-figure sum, which is sometimes not part of the offer.
Note about the software:
It is important to calculate the costs over several years. Many manufacturers use per point of delivery and per user pricing models. It is important to consider that both the number of meters (experience value 5-10 new ones per year) and the number of users (controller, power purchaser, plant manager, general manager, electrical department, external service providers, etc.) will increase. This is due to the fact that the topic of energy is becoming increasingly important as a result of the energy transition and modern energy management software is taking over more and more parts of the process control technology.
Internal and hidden costs:
- Installation effort for meters
- Replacement of existing non-compatible meters
- Wiring effort
- Costs for service: training, initial configuration, adding further meters, support
- Activation of interfaces to third-party systems: ERP, SPS, GLT (can quickly be five digits)
- Updates
- Engineering costs: measurement concept, compatibility consulting
Tips:
It is worth making a precise calculation of all components. Meter manufacturers often distribute the software very cheaply; however, they then recommend unnecessarily expensive meters or too many meters. In addition, in this case, the existing meters must be replaced more often due to incompatibilities. Suppliers of pure software are more expensive, but more compatible with additional meters, so that cheaper meters can be used for this purpose, regardless of the manufacturer. In the case of software-only manufacturers, since the software is their only product, it is usually more expensive.
2. decision criterion – features
The most important criterion most often cited by customers is a modern web interface. In addition, other criteria are relevant in the features:-.
- Real-time display
- user specific views
- Chart shapes: Line, Stacked Line, Bar, ABC Analysis, Heatmap.
- Multi-division capability (mostly industrial companies start with electricity, but plan to record gas, heat, temperatures, or water in the medium term)
- CSV export
- Integration of the transfer main counter
- Drivers for marketable meters: Siemens, Janitza, KBR, Celsa, Frako, Econ
- monthly reports.
3. decision criterion – service
The path of energy data from meters to energy savings can be very long. From our experience, lack of resources in the company is the main hurdle on this path. Accordingly, a sensible service package is important for the configuration, the creation of a measurement concept and the interpretation of the data. The following packages should be thought of in summary:
- Counter configuration
- Configuration of the analyses
- Measurement concept
- Interpretation
4. decision criterion – future viability
Most medium-sized companies are still at the beginning of their energy system optimization at the time of the purchase decision for meters and evaluation software. Accordingly, it is important to keep an eye on the future viability of an energy management system. The following criteria concerning future viability were mentioned to us by our customers:-
- Data security
- Industry 4.0 interfaces for energy data utilization in process control technology
- PLC, MES, ERP system
- Integration and controlling of own generation PV, CHP, storage
- Load shedding
- Future energy market: direct power trading; flexible tariffs- medium-term bilateral power trading/blockchain/regional marketing (e.g., to neighbors).
From this, the following requirements for the future viability of an energy management system are derived in concrete terms:-
- Interfaces to third-party systems
- Flexible software architecture
- Functional expandability through updates
- High data quality: not only pulses, but electrotechnical characteristics for maintenance and fault detection
Dipl.-Ing. Pascal Benoit
Advisory Board member ENERGIeTECH