Energy Management Platform: The Key to Savings!

Energy Management: Challenges Related to the Management of Energy Consumption Data

Optimizing the energy performance of buildings is one of the operational challenges faced by facilities managers. Every day, a large amount of data is generated by the building’s operations: water consumption, electricity consumption, ambient temperatures, operational status, etc. Added to this are the management of various energy bills, multiplied by the number of buildings in a real estate portfolio. Managers can quickly become overwhelmed by this large volume of information.

Aggregating and processing this data becomes very challenging, often discouraging building managers and consequently limiting energy optimization actions.

Moreover, some buildings do not have systems like Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) or sub-metering systems that allow precise tracking of building performance. In these cases, the only ways to monitor energy consumption data are by manually reading energy meters and tracking energy bills. These methods are time-consuming, prone to errors, and do not allow for accurate consumption projections or analyses that would be useful to the manager.

As a result, energy consumption optimization is significantly limited, which can lead to excessive energy consumption that directly impacts the operators’ bills.

Today, there are affordable solutions that allow managers to address all the issues related to the operation and maintenance of a real estate portfolio. These solutions can collect data from energy suppliers and distributors (bills, indexes, contracts, etc.), integrate connected objects and their connectivity, providing real-time operational data. The goal of such solutions is to automate data collection and processing without requiring heavy investment.

Save Energy Through Your Energy Management Platform

Choosing an energy monitoring software can be part of an energy management approach (ISO 50001 standard).

Managing bills has become a real challenge for property managers. The handling of energy bills, multiplied by the number of buildings in a real estate portfolio, can quickly become too time-consuming for building managers. An energy monitoring software allows the integration of all energy bills (water, electricity, gas) to centralize the data within a single tool. This functionality saves considerable time for the user and allows them to visualize the evolution of their consumption. They can track and analyze their energy bills and have access to a comprehensive history and an overview of their consumption.

Energy consumption data can also be recorded at a much faster frequency (hourly, every 10 minutes) through various remote reading modules in buildings: from meters (water, gas, and electricity) for energy consumption (monthly bill), from sensors for real-time energy consumption, or from probes to measure various temperatures in a building. It is easy to monitor an entire building in less than 30 minutes using these modules.

The remotely collected data is then processed by Big Data algorithms and displayed on an energy monitoring software. From this digital platform, the building manager has simple and quick access to all the building’s data, such as electricity consumption, temperature, or CO2 levels in the premises.

The user can visualize energy consumption in real-time through graphs and access a precise history compared across different time intervals. The energy monitoring software also provides visibility into each energy use (lighting, ventilation, etc.). This information makes it easy to identify sources of overconsumption and potential savings.

In advanced energy performance software, the user has access to more advanced functionalities than just data visualization.

The Savee by Advizeo platform, in particular, is an energy performance software that consolidates all the energy consumption data of a real estate portfolio.

The mapping functionality provides the user with an overview of their entire portfolio, allowing them to easily identify the most energy-consuming buildings. The manager saves time and has a comprehensive history of all the building’s consumption, enabling easy comparisons of energy performance across the portfolio.

Big data algorithms process the data to identify real-time anomalies and deviations (e.g., electricity consumption during unoccupied hours, water leaks). The user is immediately alerted on their smartphone or computer and can act quickly, reducing the risk of energy overconsumption.

Energy efficiency experts can also complement these alerts with personalized advice and recommendations, proposing an action plan tailored to the energy challenges faced by the operator. Following these recommendations, the action plan functionality available within the energy monitoring software supports the user in achieving energy savings of up to 25% on their bill. The user directly accesses the recommended actions via the platform and tracks their implementation (start and end dates, task tracking, quotes, comments, etc.). This feature helps the user monitor the improvement of their real estate portfolio’s energy efficiency.

Finally, the news feed functionality informs the user about all actions taken on their buildings. They can keep a record of specific events, such as changes in regulation or the date a probe was moved. All stakeholders (site manager, maintenance agent, etc.) can have visibility on actions carried out on different sites.