In today's corporate landscape, sustainability is a top priority, urging businesses to reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint driven by costs savings, environmental regulations, energy security, or corporate social responsibility (CSR).

While energy reduction initiatives in process industries typically concentrate on production-related assets and processes, a notable revelation emerges – offices & building operations that are part of the industrial enterprise presently contribute to nearly 30% of global final energy consumption and over a quarter of energy-related CO2 emissions (IEA). This underscores the substantial impact that optimizing such building operations can have on the broader goal of environmental responsibility.

Despite clear signs that building energy consumption and CO2 emissions are on the rise, many organizations overlook these trends or face common challenges hindering energy management optimization:

• Data Fragmentation and manual data collection

• Complex Industrial Energy Processes

• Legacy, on-premise infrastructures

• Being uninformed or unaware about energy efficiency, especially Small and medium-sized businesses.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how solutions like Yokogawa's Enterprise Energy Management Service (EEMS) empower industrial organizations of all sizes with monitoring the energy dynamics of buildings through advanced features, such as enhanced energy monitoring, robust analytics, and optimization capabilities.

The Role of Digital

Digitalization is providing a boost and is shaking up the energy game. According to IEA, in the power sector alone, the overall savings from these digitally enabled measures could be in the order of USD 80 billion per year over 2016-40, or about 5% of total annual power generation costs based on the enhanced global deployment of available digital technologies to all power plants and network infrastructure.

Digital data and analytics can reduce power system costs in at least four ways:

• By reducing operations and maintenance costs

• Improving power plant and network efficiency

• Reducing unplanned outages and downtime

• Extending the operational lifetime of assets

It is important to note that digital energy services, including Yokogawa’s EEMS, rely on robust data collection as the cornerstone of its platform. This foundational process enables organizations to make informed decisions, reduce costs, and enhance sustainability.

The centralized digital platform or system that powers services such as EEMS, compiles comprehensive data on buildings, devices, users, and much more. To capture the holistic picture, the platform gathers information from diverse sources, including water consumption, industrial production, building occupancy, weather conditions, air quality, carbon emissions, and waste data.

Eventually, it offers its users real-time data monitoring, allowing them to track energy consumption patterns, identify inefficiencies, and make immediate adjustments.

In some cases, digital platform can also support to store historical data, providing organizations with a valuable long-term perspective for better forecasting and strategic planning.

Smart meters and sensors and communication protocols

For EEMS, optimizing energy management for buildings initiates within the building itself, where meters and sensors are put in place to collect energy data, transmitting it through communication networks to the EEMS platform.

Various communication protocols, such as Modbus, M-Bus, LoRaWAN, Sigfox, or proprietary methods, facilitate data flow. Gateways play a crucial role, relaying data to EMS platforms through protocols like HTTP(S), FTP, SFTP, and email.

Despite the advantages of different protocols, integration challenges arise due to proprietary or industry-specific standards. Overcoming these challenges demands a deep understanding of evolving protocols, technologies, and market trends and a platform that can act as a single source of truth.

Interoperability standards, particularly through open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), become essential. Open APIs act as translators, enabling seamless integration with various protocols and data structures. They serve as a bridge between the gateway or an intermediary server and the EMS platform, standardizing data for analysis, reporting, and decision-making.

Energy management for smart buildings & offices

Yokogawa’s EEMS supports various use cases, however, there’s a module for Smart Building & Offices that extends Yokogawa’s energy management capabilities from industrial facilities to the enterprise market, such as commercial and industrial buildings, data centers, and offices.

Besides managing the energy consumption of buildings and offices and energy processes, EEMS provides functionality for the management of lighting, air quality, and occupancy visualized with interactive 2D and 3D maps displayed on Dashboards, including customized reporting and notifications. 

Aggregation and analysis of all energy-related data

With EEMS, Yokogawa addresses the compelling needs to reduce energy costs and improve facility process performance. EEMS connects sensors, meters, controllers, building management systems, and other IoT devices to manage and reduce the energy consumption of utilities and energy processes.

With the aggregation and analysis of all energy-related data, we help energy managers identify underperforming facilities and processes and monitor continuous performance improvement with AI analysis and real-time dashboarding anytime and anywhere.

Key Features of Yokogawa's EEMS:

• Real-Time Monitoring: Gain insights into energy usage at a granular level for informed decision-making.

• Data Analytics and Reporting: Turn raw data into actionable insights, identifying trends and areas for improvement.

• Integration with Building Systems: Seamlessly coordinate HVAC, lighting, and other systems for maximum efficiency.

• Predictive Maintenance: Via integration with other Yokogawa solutions such as OpreX Asset Health Insight, you can Aanticipate equipment failures, reducing downtime and preventing energy waste.

Benefits of EEMS for Office Buildings:

• Cost Savings: Identify and address inefficiencies for significant reductions in energy bills.

• Environmental Impact: Contribute to sustainability goals by lowering carbon emissions and ecological footprints.

• Regulatory Compliance: Stay in line with tightening global regulations on energy consumption and environmental impact.

Collaboration and integration between IT and OT

In summary, adopting data-driven sustainability in modern energy management, particularly for office buildings and utilities, is essential. Digital solutions like Yokogawa’s EEMS are pivotal in this shift, enabling comprehensive data collection beyond energy consumption metrics. This empowers organizations to make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and advance sustainability goals. However, the journey from data collection to effective energy management presents challenges, notably in diverse communication protocols and the crucial collaboration between IT and OT.

Beyond Buildings: The Smart Factory

EEMS extends its reach with the Smart Factory module, monitoring and analyzing the energy consumption of plant assets in (near) real-time. More information here.

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Strengthen your Energy Management capabilities today with EEMS and our Global Helpdesk Support and Energy and Sustainability consulting services.

Contact us to learn more about your opportunities or schedule a live demo.

Author: Adrianta Wardhana

Adrianta Wardhana is a Global Business Development Manager at Yokogawa, specializing in the Digital Transformation Portfolio and Solution, including Industrial IoT, IT/OT Convergence, Cybersecurity, and AI-as-a-service. As a Strategic Business Developer, he oversees sales leads in the US, South America, and Europe. Adrianta excels in establishing and managing strategic partnerships, strengthening Yokogawa's digital capabilities. His skills span Business Development, Strategic Partnerships, Business Strategy, Account Management, and New Business Development, reflecting his impactful contributions to Yokogawa's growth in the ever-evolving landscape of industrial technology.