ENMAT Opens New Energy Management E-Commerce Store

The ENMAT Team are pleased to announce the opening of the ENMAT Store, selling Smart Meters, Data Loggers, and ENMAT Software.

The new E-Commerce store allows buyers to purchase Energy Management hardware and software. Alongside the hardware are services such as the ENMAT Installation Services  where buyers can alsocontact ENMAT to discuss booking an engineer to install and configure the purchased hardware equipment.

ENMAT have 3 data loggers, which collect varied consumption data from Smart Meters. The ENMAT Data Loggers are Ethernet based and can be configured to work over WIFI or 3G:

ENMAT Premium Data Logger 

ENMAT Standard Data Logger 

ENMAT Lite Data Logger 

http://www.en-mat.com/enmat-opens-new-energy-management-e-commerce-store

Behavioral and Culture Change Is a Must for Energy Management

A recent report reveals that good management practices in energy-intense environments have a spillover effect to that positively impacts energy efficiency. However, the authors also state that good management practices with non-energy specific targets are correlated with energy inefficiencies.

The important takeaway is that an organization can be operating very efficiently from a management perspective, but at the same time be very energy inefficient. We are seeing this in variety of industries across the U.S. The culture of “cheap energy” or “it’s just overhead” is persistent in the mindset of upper management. These mental models will take time to reshape, and no one should expect it to happen overnight.

The oil crisis in the 1970s led some countries such as Brazil to react on fundamental issues to make themselves more energy efficient. Why do we need a crisis to act properly? Why can’t industry do the right things because they are the right things to do?

These questions are not easy to answer. Companies exist to make a profit for their shareholders. The most important aspect of a business is perceived as making widgets or providing a service, and not how much energy usage goes into these activities. However, as sustainability encroaches on all aspects of business, managers are realizing the harm from the wasted energy usage. This includes excess costs, harmful emissions, lower-quality products or services, and numerous things that have a negative impact on business.

Energy is an irreplaceable resource. The need for culture change starts with a personal understanding of the bigger picture, and allowing oneself to lead by example.

Traditional ISO management standards such as ISO 9001 for quality and ISO 14001 for environment have been successful mechanisms to bring about cultural shifts in organizations. The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) model has allowed organizations to proactively manage for quality and environmental issues. The oversight brought on by third-party certification has also “upped” the stakes for all stakeholders. Today, many organizations follow the core fundamental requirements of these management systems and millions of organizations have opted to become certified.

Two years ago in June, ISO 50001 Energy Management Systems standard was released by the ISO organization. This new standard calls for companies to show for energy performance improvement. With the same structure of the other international management system standards, ISO 50001 specifically focuses on energy issues and brings energy to the attention of top level management by requiring a specific policy for energy.

When management shows commitment, we can see great results from this new ISO management system. Some of the most obvious benefits are cost reduction, emission reduction, waste reduction, and improvement of products and services.

Energy management cannot rely on the energy champion at a facility. Energy management must be incorporated into the daily lives of all involved in the design, engineering, production, and service areas of companies. Collectively, under a management system companies can reap the benefits of becoming a lean operator using the optimal level of energy to produce or deliver a service — not a kilowatt more!

http://www.en-mat.com/behavioral-and-culture-change-is-a-must-for-energy-management

Cloud computing saves energy on huge scale, says new study

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have come up with a model designed to show the full extent of cloud’s energy efficiency

The report, put together by a research team comprising McCormick School of Engineering Northwestern University and Lawrence Berkeley and part funded by Google, unveils the CLEER (Cloud Energy and Emissions Research) model, described as the ‘first ever open-access, fully transparent systems model for energy analysis of cloud systems by the research community’.

What’s more, the model predicts an 87% reduction in primary energy use if companies moved their business software – comprising CRM, productivity and email tools – to the cloud.

The report rightly notes that not all modelling attempts are 100% accurate, but adds: “Despite uncertainties, the energy savings potential of cloud-based software is likely to be substantial on a national scale given the vast differences between the energy efficiencies of local and cloud data centres.”

It’s worth noting that part of these ‘uncertainties’ will revolve around the researchers  only having access to publicly available data from a variety of sources – the word ‘estimate’ in its various guises was used 126 times in the report.

Yet the methodology seems more than sound. In this US case study, the researchers worked out that 86.7m of US workers used computers, and of that number, all used email, whilst 58m used productivity tools and 8m CRM software.

Using that data, the academics then analysed present day software data centre characteristics, client IT device characteristics, current data centre and network power use, current cloud-based software data centre characteristics, before comparing the two.

The overall results, particularly the 87% energy decrease, are shown helpfully here. In specific terms, it will mean a 47 petajoule (PJ) output per year in the US, as opposed to 373 PJ in a traditional data centre:

New nanomaterial developed for reducing CO2 emissions from coal stations

Australian researchers have developed a new nano-material which can help reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power stations.

University of Adelaide researchers have developed a new nano-material that could help separate the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from nitrogen. This would allow the carbon dioxide to be separated before being stored, rather than released to the atmosphere.

Associate Professor Christopher Sumby, the project leader, said that most of Australia’s energy generation still comes from coal and changing to cleaner energies is great step.

The researchers have produced a new absorbent material, called a ‘metal-organic framework’, which has remarkable selectivity for separating CO2 from nitrogen. 

Energy management certification can help boost efficiency and reduce consumption

Energy management standards, such as the ISO 50001 Energy Management certification, are crucial to businesses facing energy constraints, Certification Europe founder and director Dr John Ryan argued at the recent Eastern Cape Energy Efficiency conference.

The event, hosted by the South African Association for Energy Efficiency, called for a collective effort from industry to take the lead in energy efficient policies and technologies. The conference took place at the Nelson Mandela Bay Science and Technology Centre, in Port Elizabeth.

Ryan said that ISO 50001 requires that an organisation understands the various factors that influence its energy consumption and that it sets a baseline against which it can measure its energy consumption.

“By implementing and following ISO 50001, an organisation can achieve an energy saving of between 5% and 37%. Since 2005, the total world- wide saving made by organisations that have the certification has been €160-million. Adhering to the standard will also reduce the carbon footprint of the organisation,” he explained.

Another solution to the energy crisis was for organisations to establish energy improvement programmes. Such programmes would include a network to facilitate information exchange in energy performance; the development of a series of relevant industrial guidance on localised energy issues, such as energy efficient fabrication, design and project management; as well as the application of quality protocols to energy efficiency, he said.

Industry sectors should publish common energy issues that incorporated inputs from companies, based on their experiences and challenges, and that built capacity within industry from interactions with specialists on demonstration projects, research, training and energy auditing.

Energy management systems for organisations, where inefficient energy management was a business risk, could also be incorporated as a solution. Such systems included conducting energy reviews of how energy was used, prioritizing opportunities for improvement, resource action plans to ensure completion using verification methods to track progress and reviewing the method to align it with future energy demands of the organisation.


http://www.en-mat.com/energy-management-certification-can-help-boost-efficiency-and-reduce-consumption

Emissions: Can we Decarbonize?

Earlier this month the UK parliament debated an amendment to an energy bill which would establish quantitative targets for the decarbonization of the nation’s energy sector by 2030. The amendment was defeated in a close vote, prompting strong reactions. Tim Yeo, the Conservative chair of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee who introduced the amendment, said that the “failure to introduce a clean energy target now could make it harder for the UK to meet its long-term carbon reduction targets.”  Caroline Flint, Labor’s shadow minister for energy and climate change called the vote “a humiliating failure.”

However, lost in the debate before and after the vote is that the UK has already committed itself to the decarbonization of its energy supply. This commitment results from the combination of an expectation of future economic growth and the passage 2008 Climate Change Act that mandates targets and timetables for emissions reductions. Growth in GDP coupled with reduced emissions is decarbonization.

Consequently, adopting formal legislation for decarbonization would be largely redundant. The UK government estimated that in 2012, 40 percent of emission came from the power supply sector.  If the Climate Change Act is to succeed in its goal of achieving a 34 percent from 1990 emissions by 2022, then a substantial decarbonization of the power sector must occur.

The rate of decarbonization of the power sector implied by the targets and timetables of the Climate Change Act could be a bit more or less than the overall decarbonization rate. In the following discussion I assume that the rate of decarbonization of the power sector occurs at the overall implied rate and explore what that would imply.

Read more: http://www.en-mat.com/emissions-can-we-decarbonize