Energy Data Management for the ‘ISO 50001 Mind-Set’

ISO 50001 follows the Deming cycle (plan-do-check-act) to help organizations plan, implement, maintain and improve an Energy Management System (EnMS). For large energy using organizations, energy data is most often managed in an Energy Management Information System (EMIS). In a previous article EnMS and EMIS: What’s the Difference?, Dr. Paul Monaghan and I described the outputs of an EMIS and the benefits that those outputs bring to a complete EnMS.

In this short article we primarily focus on “Energy Planning” and the key steps necessary to allow for correct checking of energy performance. The EMIS outputs can again be utilized, but we will focus on what outputs to use and how to use them?

Working with a customer a few weeks back, I had asked them to identify their significant energy uses (SEUs). I had also asked the customer in parallel to consider what energy metering data they wanted to assess.

When I received the list of SEUs and the list of meters, there was no obvious link between them. This surprised me, because the customer had detailed metering data for their whole site, knew from experience what their SEUs were, but still the meters did not match up to their SEUs!

I asked the customer to think “What do I want to achieve from the data that I am collecting?” I wanted them to realize that they needed the energy data to check energy performance monitoring to help their organization to set realistic and achievable objectives and targets.

They believed their organization possessed all of the metering data they could ever need. This is a great starting point, but I explained that, we needed to start by reverse engineering, i.e. from the top down! That is: the ISO 50001 mind-set.

So, I went about explaining energy data management for ISO 50001. After a few minutes the customer had a “eureka” moment and stopped me, saying, “I get it! This is thinking on a higher level.”

The figure below describes the 6 key steps that I told the customer to consider, along with what questions to ask at each step and some example answers to those questions.

Below are examples associated with each Step:

1. SEUs: Production Lines, Lighting, HVAC, Compressed Air, Boilers (i.e., energy uses offering the most potential for energy efficiency; processes; plant, equipment, fixtures, fittings; buildings and building services; raw materials; water use (energy associated); other services, such as transport).
2. Energy Drivers: Production Units, Occupancy, Floor Area, Degree Days. (i.e. relevant variables affecting energy use)
3. Energy Baseline: Electrical (MWhs) Production line meter, Electrical (kWhs) Lighting meter, Electrical (MWhs) HVAC meter, Natural Gas (MMBtu) Boiler meter. (i.e. direct metering of SEUs or grouped metering of similar energy use; processes plant, equipment, fixtures, etc.)
4. EnPIs: Electrical (MWh) / Production Quantities, Electrical (kWhs) Lighting / Occupancy , Electrical (MWhs) HVAC / Degree Days, Natural Gas (MMBtu) Boiler / Production units, Total MWh/m² floor area. (i.e. EnPIs that directly assist in monitoring targets)
5. Benchmarking:  should establish the baseline energy use for each SEU identified in terms of EnPIs, benchmark my EnPI values against best practice EnPIs for similar processes, and benchmark my EnPI values against those of my colleagues in other sites.
6. Objectives & Targets: Set your targets relative to the Benchmark and best practice guidelines, this may also be tied to corporate targets or legal requirements. (Remember if you don’t know where you want to get to, you won’t know when you’re there!)

Explaining this process brought the customer to consider the “higher level of thinking.”

Bottom line: The customer had plenty of the metering data but needed to integrate this data into an energy management system following Energy Planning – (Steps 1-6 and the “ISO 50001 mind-set”), to set realistic and achievable objectives and targets.

Mark McCaffrey  is an energy engineer with an M.Eng.Sc. in Environmental Life Cycle Assessment. At Enerit his responsibilities include the delivery and implementation of Enerit ISO 50001 energy management software to end customers and partners. He works closely with the internal development team providing feedback on software improvements and direction of Enerit products. He also participates in EU research and development projects focusing on implementing ISO 50001 in different sectors. Enerit is focused on developing innovative IT and Software services for energy management. Enerit is the first company in the world to provide comprehensive software for large energy users to implement the international standard in Energy Management ISO 50001. It is the only systematic energy management solution that helps its users convert energy information into dynamic integrated organization-wide action plans to get teams working together to drive down energy costs.