DEM Digital Energy Management

DIGITAL ENERGY MANAGEMENT

Global warming and energy supply bottlenecks are considered to be mega trends of economy, heavily affecting economic development – from now on for the forthcoming 10 or more years. This change is perceivable right now and catchwords such as e-mobility, the smart grid, new energy mix and others more have nearly become day-to-day idioms.

Indeed, the energy and energy services markets are facing rapid change, understanding that change of demand structures, environment, deregulations, scarcity of energy resources, new-type technologies do emerge at the same time. This affects future intra and inter-company handling of energy and emission issues.

We at the IIW have drawn a “Picture of the Future: Energy 2025”: a draft including 15 different facets, all of them indicating that the top issue “energy” will turn out to be more complex in future. We will, for instance, see …

  • integration into the digital energy network (smart grid) calling for higher grid quality following EN 50160
  • increasing needs for documentation of energy usage, intensity and efficiency, and extended metering, monitoring, reporting
  • rigid legislation implying certificates and audits towards EMAS und ISO 14000
  • environmental commitment also meaning a quantification of CO2 and energy efficiency data for each single product or piece of service
  • new international sourcing, contracting and pricing (e.g. yield management) that will drive new IT applications.

Subsequently, we expect that energy and emission management (EEM) will necessarily be much more performing, and will also receive more attention on a top management level in the near future.

We are absolutely convinced that it will particularly be digital technologies being the key technologies for dissolving tomorrow´s problems within the energy and environmental sector. Still, digital technology is divided into automation and control technology on the one hand, and information and telecommunications technologies on the other hand – however all of them are on their way to digital convergence.
Here, the IIW Institute of Information Management and Technology serves as an independent research partner, maintaining its dialogue with all technology suppliers of all kind within the value chain.

We are aware that industrial, commercial, and service firms will need a more professional and digital technology based energy management – starting from smart metering, including a manifold of subtile differentiations and adaptations of today´s existing data collection, PPS and ERP systems, and finally an extended energy controlling as well as risk management applications in MIS.

Subsequently, generation, storage, feeding-in, i.e. energy-related performance structures will have to be covered to a significantly higher extent – compared to today´s practice. New operational energy systems and intra and inter-company energy flows will have to be covered by all information and control systems such as MES, PPS, and ERP systems.
Furthermore, companies will also more detailledly consider energy issues within their procurement and sales departments. A lot more metering, new billing schemes, energy contract management and a number of special software applications will additionally be developed.

All this results in new operational handling of control information and new requirements for information management and IT. Eventually, top management finds itself with aggregated efficiency and risk information on energy and emission issues.

IIW´s contributions

It is IIW´s expertise to give substantial conceptual support to industrial, commercial, or service firms. At the end of the day, an action plan, a list of short term to long term measures has to be presented and to be put into practice.

There is a 2-step-approach: Firstly, we offer a workshop sequence that prepares for the issues, and also identifies deficits in corporate energy management.
As a second step, our management programme offers a practice-oriented methodology in order to fill the gaps and avoid potential problems later on. Such an integrated project includes the following phases: analysis phase, conceptual phase and implementation phase including IIW´s operational support when putting the ambitiuos DEM concept into reality.