Energy in today’s society
In today’s world most managers face the same problems, which become more pressing since most of the countries are facing recession. The most common question in the current economical environment is: ‘How can we reduce costs?’ and it doesn’t take long for a company to realize that one powerful opportunity lies in improving their energy management strategies.
At this stage there are lots of software companies which provide Real Time Energy Monitoring Systems and there are a lot more which are planning to enter this market.
During the last months I’ve been researching software that allows a company to monitor their energy consumption and here is what I found:
- Most of the software provides real time monitoring and alert systems.
- In order for that to happen, the companies providing the software will install their own meters.
- They store historical data in a database which can be accessed at any time through their software.
- They send alarms every time the energy consumption rises over a certain value.
These sound like really good systems that can help any company save some money from monitoring their energy consumption. At the same time they are a step forward from where we were 10 years ago, but here are some questions that I think deserve a little bit of attention:
Why can’t these companies use the existing meters and monitoring systems from a plant? We live in a world where technology evolves really fast and companies shouldn’t have to change their meters/hardware every time new software is released on the market. Imagine changing your computer each time a new version of Windows is released.
What is the software doing with all the data that has gathered throughout the years?In today’s society holding data is not that important any more. The most important thing is what you do with that data. Having access to information doesn’t make you better or stronger, but how you use that information does.
And most importantly why haven’t we evolved in the last 2, 3 or 4 years?At this stage the functionality diagram of each company that provides this kind of systems should look like this:
I found this by mistake today and it put a smile on my face because it includes all the functionality that I would expect from an Energy Monitoring System and all the functionality I was talking about in the last few months.
It looks like there still is some hope left and finally a system was developed which will challenge the other companies to rethink their products and evolve.
