Thanks to the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Internet of Energy, businesses can easily monitor and track energy usage and asset performance in real time. This allows them to optimise the use of their energy, improve operational efficiencies and cut their costs.
But what’s the best way to monitor energy in the short and long-term? Do you invest in an in-house energy management department? Should you hire an outside firm to take care of things? Or how about a hybrid solution? There’s a lot to consider.
When weighing up energy management options, think about:
These all help inform the decision to build (or continue investing in) a devoted department, or to delegate and bring in an outside service provider.
Aside from the installation and preparation, an energy management programme requires ongoing work to maintain it.
Firstly, you’ve got to collect and analyse the data. Handling this internally means hiring or training staff to turn the data into actionable information. Your wireless networks may also need to be prepped to take on such an internet-heavy application. That could mean upgrading your current system or switching to an improved internet service.
One of the biggest setbacks of an in-house energy management system is the expense.
You’ll have to cover:
An equal or even greater concern is the need for additional cybersecurity. Dealing with such high volumes of sensitive data requires:
For the average business just looking to monitor their energy use, these advanced methods may be outside their capabilities – but ignoring them could have dire consequences.
Sometimes dubbed as Energy Management as a Service (EMaaS), the external option is proving popular as it takes the arduous job of managing your energy data out of your hands.
When outsourcing, an EMaaS supplier does all the following and more:
These are experts, fluent in the energy management system landscape. Their service is convenient, less of a headache for you, and is often cheaper than creating your own in-house team.
What you gain by outsourcing energy management, you potentially lose in self-sufficiency and core competencies. Without direct control over the day-to-day running of an energy management solution, you could miss out on:
Then you have to consider the ever expanding knowledge gap between your company and the contractor:
You must also consider the communication delay. With third parties, it’s often harder to act immediately when the energy monitoring system catches an abnormality. This delay can slow down or reduce the efficacy of the system as a whole.
It’s clear that in-house energy management systems and EMaaS have their own distinct benefits and drawbacks. So you’ll be relieved to learn that there is a third option that marries the best of both worlds while avoiding the pitfalls. This hybrid energy management system outsources the technology side of things, but brings the answers right to your doorstep.
With the benefits of in-house and out-of-house energy monitoring solutions, inter-house energy management allows you to use a third-party technology to detect, collect and sort the information gleaned from the connected assets.
The better systems also include all the software and hardware necessary to conduct comprehensive energy monitoring, so you can:
Asset managers, facility managers and others within your business can quickly learn how to interpret the system’s readings and chart a course for responsive action. They do this with the solution provider’s support and data science services. This assistance is flexible, so you can call for help as much as you want until complete internal fluency has been achieved.
Inter-house energy management allows you to:
Ultimately, it delivers a better process for managing your energy. By implementing a system like this, you should see a significant return on investment quickly, without exposing your business to costly system implementations and maintenance.
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