Energy management is the process of tracking, monitoring, controlling, and optimizing energy consumption to conserve usage and decrease energy costs. It involves the planning and operation of energy production, distribution, and storage units, with the objectives of resource conservation, climate protection, and cost savings. Energy management is a systematic endeavor to optimize energy efficiency for specific political, economic, and environmental objectives through engineering and management techniques.
Energy management includes the following steps:
- Collecting and analyzing continuous data
- Identifying optimizations in equipment schedules, set points, and flow rates to improve energy efficiency
- Calculating return on investment
- Executing energy optimization solutions
- Repeating step two to continue optimizing energy efficiency
Energy management is important because it helps reduce energy consumption, which leads to cost savings, reduced carbon emissions, and lower risk. It also helps companies budget more efficiently and gain better insight into overall operational costs. Energy management programs can also help companies lower costs through competitive advantages.
Energy management software can be used to predict future energy usage, plan energy budgets, and control energy consumption, which helps a company’s strategic decision-makers ensure its energy management strategy correlates with its objectives and financial planning.
Energy management is not limited to just switching off unused lights and appliances. It covers many areas like logistics, industrial production, machine maintenance, energy procurement process, and even personal life. The ultimate aim of energy management is not only to save costs but also to achieve complete environmental sustainability.
