Energy efficiency is key on the corporate agenda, future profitability and sustainability are the stakes. But, determining efficacy and effectiveness is easier said than done at enterprise level due to the broad nature of the operational challenge. ‘Going Green’ costs money upfront and retrofitting is always an expense that needs to demonstrate savings in order to attract corporate spending. Saving power is one benefit of energy efficiency, but to leverage these savings many facets need to be brought into play. This is not unique to South Africa – it is a global challenge facing the world.
The starting point is to measure energy consumption to determine a base line. This applies not just to electricity, but extends to all enterprise utilities as they all have an energy consumption component:
* Water.
* Air.
* Gas.
* Electricity.
* Steam.
According to Omniflex, it has found that the cost to make these measurements accurately is often the largest barrier to entry. Few corporates will throw caution to the wind and commit revenue without a business case. To this end, the company has invested significant effort to find ways to use existing measurement equipment where possible to reduce the start up costs. Remote monitoring interfaces to most energy metering equipment have been developed according to principles which:
* Adopt standard communication protocols.
* Cater for legacy output devices.
* Are able to incorporate a wide variety of energy metering equipment.
Omniflex says it can now provide cost effective adaptable solutions – from single point systems to large corporate enterprise monitoring – allowing the integration of existing equipment and legacy systems, and providing the tools to manage an aggregated view of the enterprise with no labour intensive capture and collation process. The systems also enable automated reporting for compliance management against the savings action plans.
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