This is guest post by John Clifford of building automation solutions. John's bio is included below the article.
We all know the importance of taking a ‘holistic view’ of energy consumption within a building and it’s often said that the key to this is Facilities and ICT working in harmony. However, this can often be challenging as disparate budgets, siloed decision making and traditional hierarchies all go against this organisation-wide thinking. This is made even more challenging when you consider mixed-use, multi-tier estates that have significant amounts of legacy or even obsolete BEMS equipment.
The Energy Solutions Group has tackled this challenge head on, integrating their remote BEMS products with JouleX Energy Manager to provide true holistic energy solutions to their clients. The integration of JouleX with BEMS-focused remote products such as utility monitoring and continual diagnostics provides significantly more insight into energy consumption than when the facility and ICT are considered separately.
The value of this is demonstrated when analysing energy use within an office building. The BEMS or AM&T solution will usually provide data about small power (plug load) on a particular floor but it is impossible to determine whether this is related to ICT equipment or, for example, a portable heater. By bringing JouleX into the mix, the ICT power consumption can be subtracted, providing much improved visibility of what else is contributing to overall energy consumption.
Another example of this is within the data centre. Cooling, controlled via the BEMS, traditionally relies on a small number of environmental sensors (such as thermometers) within the data centre hall which often leads to inefficiencies. Our integrated approach uses the data collected by JouleX Energy Manager from sensors within the ICT equipment itself (such as air temperature) to determine the cooling requirements and BEMS control. With this granular detail about the environmental conditions within the data centre racks themselves, the optimal level of cooling can be delivered 100% of the time – eliminating energy wastage.
It is clear that there are significant advantages to bringing together the Facility and ICT, however it is impractical to expect existing BEMS systems to be upgraded to the latest and greatest model to allow this. The work undertaken by The Energy Solutions Group has enabled the benefits discussed to be realised with BEMS systems that are already in-situ – making the most of the functionality of both JouleX Energy Management and the BEMS.
Our holistic energy solution is called ecoICT. Please click here to see a Solution Overview
John has extensive experience of driving innovation into Energy Management and Sustainability, with a proven track record of developing new propositions that tackle the ever growing problem of managing energy costs and carbon emissions.
In his current role, he is responsible for the development and delivery of Energy Services within one of the UK’s largest Energy Management companies. This involves working in partnership with large blue chip organisations to drive down energy use, often in challenging environments such as data centres and prestigious office spaces.
John has held senior positions in a number of sectors including construction, IT and manufacturing – both in technical and business development roles. This range of experience allows him to take a holistic approach, staying focused on the business benefits of solutions rather than the technical details.
In addition to his industry experience, John holds a Masters’ Degree in Systems Engineering from Loughborough University.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
In case you haven't had a chance to see it yet, we've put together a great new white paper for Facilities teams, outlining the challenges and sollutions for getting control over the plug load costs and consumption in your enterprise. I'd like to invite you to read through it and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Introduction:
Building Management Systems have conducted most enterprise energy management over the past several decades. But just as technological advances have made the physical office worker more virtual, physical boundaries like buildings and campus locations are giving way to borderless IT networks and a broader community of business devices. This can be a challenge for Facilities departments tasked with managing and reducing the rising costs and demand for energy across the enterprise. After all, if you can’t see the energy being consumed by various IT devices throughout the enterprise, how can you lower it?
Power per square foot or power per user calculations have set the standard for determining how much energy a building’s IT equipment consumes. But what if you could see actual energy consumption, utilization, cost and carbon emissions for every device that is plugged into your network? New solutions for enterprise energy management are making this possible, and delivering dramatic cost savings—up to 60 percent in some cases.
As energy management becomes IP-based, you gain a detailed view of energy consumption for all your network-connected IT devices, even HVAC, lighting, video and access control systems, and more. An enterprise energy management solution can benefit Facilities by providing detailed visibility into plug load, along with automated power management for data centers, campus or distributed office environments, extending into facilities. Subsequently, organizations can use the solution to automatically manage and reduce power consumption for these devices and systems—saving time and money and helping meet sustainability requirements.
Click here to download the full white paper: See the Power—Achieve Plug Load Visibility with Enterprise Energy Management.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
JouleX is built on the underlying principle that energy should always follow the productive user. In a business environment, energy is made available to users for one reason and one reason only: to provide those users with an efficient and reliable environment to do productive work. It only stands to reason that if a user is not present in your building or facility, it is a waste of the company's valuable resources to provide their area with energy for the lighting system, heating and cooling, VoIP phone, or for their computer to operate.
In enterprise environments, the patterns of energy usage are almost universal. Our customers are consistently shocked to find out how much energy they are using during non-business hours or when those offices and equipment are not being used. This is the equivalent of leaving your car idling in the parking area when you don’t need it. You would never do that, so why leave energy running at the office when it’s not needed or why allow your computer to consume the maximum amount of energy when it is only 10% utilized?
To really know how efficiently your energy resources are being used, it’s important to learn about the largest unnecessary drains of energy across your enterprise are likely to be. Through many of our current customers, we’ve observed these typical energy wasters in just about every environment:
The truth about PCs, Laptops, and Monitors:
- When in use, your PCs are wasting up to 30% of the energy consumed to power them.
- Even in enterprises with policies about powering down computing devices when leaving the office, more than half of all users just don’t turn things off at all.
- In environments made up primarily of laptops, our customers have found that about one third of those laptops never leave the building or power down.
- Even fewer users turn off monitors than turn off PCs and laptop computers. Most monitors are never turned off, for any reason.
Printers, Copiers, Scanners, and VoIP Phones:
- In general, these devices are never powered down, unless they have built-in energy saving shutdown options.
- Even with the energy saving devices, to be effective, those features have to be enabled and rarely are.
HVAC:
- Environmental controls tend to maintain a consistent temperature in your facilities, regardless of whether or not there are actually users in the building that need the comfortable temperature maintained. This is the equivalent of your mother yelling at you for “heating the outside” as a child, when you left the front door open a little too long during the winter.
- By maintaining a constant temperature around the clock, your office facility is wasting 66% of your HVAC spend.
Is this what your building looks like at night? How many thousands of dollars a month could you save if these lights were off when the building is empty?
Lighting:
- There is often a Last Person Out Turns Out The Lights policy in office buildings. Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of wasted energy up to chance.
- In facilities with Building Management Systems that control lighting, the options for automation are either inefficient (timed on/off function) or expensive (proximity sensors).
- Lights are often left on around the clock; not only wasting energy, but also drastically shortening the life of the bulbs and creating another expense. Even energy efficient bulbs waste money when left on 24/7.
Although these energy wasting culprits exist within most enterprises, JouleX has built JouleX Energy Manager, a solution based on our principle of energy following the productive user. JouleX Energy Manager enables hundreds of our customers to leverage their existing infrastructure to realize energy savings and efficiency so their energy is truly following their productive users. In our next articles, we’ll share how JouleX Energy Manager helps you get a handle on the energy usage across all of the facilities of your entire enterprise.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
As Energy Managers worldwide are looking at ways to implement energy saving strategies, and IT departments are trying to maximize the effectiveness of the energy they use, each of these departments are beginning to recognize the need to work with one another to achieve the results they are looking for.
From our extensive time collaborating with Facilities, Energy, and IT/Data Center managers, we have learned that although all of these departments have the same goals and needs, they are challenged with learning an entirely new way to work together and, often times, a whole new language to speak.
With the information we've gathered, our team has produced a new white paper focused on helping these departments learn to Bridge the Gap between Facilities and IT to Reduce Energy Costs across the Enterprise.
We value your feedback. Please leave us your suggestions for Bridging the Gap in the comments section.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
Happy Friday! We're happy to share that the third in our series on Facilities & IT was published this week. You can see that here: Facilities and IT: The Similarities.
You can find the first two articles here Energy Management: Building a Bridge Between Facilities and IT and here Facilities and IT: Learning to Speak the Language.
Since Sunday is Earth Day, most of the articles coming out around sustainable business are very Earth Day focused this week. Here are a few that we found useful or interesting.
- 10 Ways for Executives to Green Their Business "In honor of Earth Day, here are 10 ways that executive women can leverage their influence to make a difference."
- Game Consoles Waste over $1B Worth of Electricity Per Year "Analysts at Carnegie Mellon University report that game consoles are wasting power at record levels: 10.8 terawatt-hours, by their estimate, costing U.S. homeowners some $1.24 billion a year."
- Greenpeace's Clean Cloud Push "In its trademark smashmouth style, Greenpeace this week took cloud computing companies to task for using dirty energy -- and then came under fire itself over its methods and assertions. "
- High Speed Rail Isn't the Most Efficient Way to Cut Carbon Emissions "The California High Speed Rail Authority claims that by 2030, if the train ran entirely on renewable energy, then it would start reducing the state’s carbon emissions by about 5.4 million metric tons per year. That would mean the rail network would cut California’s emissions at a cost of, at the very low end, $250 per ton of carbon dioxide over the ensuing 50 years, given the system’s current price tag"
- Northeast States Bucking Carbon Emissions Trend "Study finds that cap-and-trade and other clean energy policies have helped Northeastern states cut CO2 emissions faster than the rest of the nation."
- Business Roundtable: Create, Grow, Sustain 2012 Report "now in its fifth year, features narratives from 126 CEOs on how their companies are leading the way with solutions to make the U.S. economy more sustainable while also driving economic growth and job creation."
We hope you have a Great Weekend and a VERY Green Earth Day!
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
This is the third in our series on brokering energy management collaboration between the Facilities and IT departments. You can see the first article here: Energy Management: Building a Bridge between Facilities and IT. The second article can be found here: Facilities and IT: Learning to Speak the Language.
We have covered the differences in both the focus areas and the terminology barriers between Facilities and IT. Now it’s time to take a look at the similarities between the two departments and the collaboration needed to successfully implement an enterprise-wide energy management solution. As with all other collaborative relationships, it is easiest to build a team effort on common ground.
Both Facilities and IT provide critical services to the rest of the organization and, although providing very different resources, each department works in a similar way. Often times, projects developed in other departments do not involve IT as an important part of the implementation until the last minute, leaving them scrambling for resources in the 11th hour. Along the same vein, Facilities is only involved by IT when they run out of available power and the situation is critical. With data centers running out of space and power at a rapid rate, energy management has become a growing challenge for IT departments.
Because energy management solutions run on the network, Facilities may see it as an IT product. Because Facilities realize the budgetary relief of energy management, IT may view it as a Facilities product. However, it’s important to remember that energy management is not department specific. From facilities management devices ( HVAC and lighting) on the Facilities’ side, and computing devices (PCs, monitors, switches, routers, servers, VoIP phones, printers) on the IT side, enterprise energy management spans the entire organization.
Ensuring there is enough capacity to meet the demands of the IT organization for years to come is an effort that must be undertaken by both departments, as a team. Because managing energy efficiency is critical to IT’s ability to maintain SLAs, as well as Facilities’ ability to plan for and deliver sufficient power to the enterprise as a whole, neither department can afford to pass up the opportunity to collaborate in the implementation of an enterprise energy solution.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
With Earth Day approaching, the news and blog worlds are abuzz with articles about green energy, sustainable business, and ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Here are some of the most interesting articles we found, and the articles you may have missed on the JouleX blog!
From the JouleX Green IT Blog:
Other great articles worth a read:
- Pro-Business, Pro-Environment - Article by UNEP Climate hero and endurance athlete Charles Scott
- Reducing All Energy Use Can Have an Impact at the Gas Pump - Gas prices are expected to breach four dollars per gallon this week and residents could see some relief through better energy management in general, according to experts.
- Green IT Projects Struggle for Green Light - IT admins charged with cutting energy costs find it easier to buy greener gear than to get high-ROI green initiatives approved.
- When it Comes to Energy Efficiency, Knowledge = Power Reduction - A new White House initiative underscores the notion that more consumers would reduce their electricity consumption, if it was easier to track in real time.
- Beyond the Hour: Earth Hour City Challenge For A Low Carbon Economy- Founded in Sweden to celebrate Earth Hour 2011, the Earth Hour City Challenge initiative has been created to celebrate cities that are taking amazing steps forward in creating a greener, cleaner and more sustainable city to live and inspiring other cities to do the same.
Founded in Sweden to celebrate Earth Hour 2011, the Earth Hour City Challenge initiative has been created to celebrate cities that are taking amazing steps forward in creating a greener, cleaner and more sustainable city to live and inspiring other cities to do the same.
Source: Ecopreneurist (http://s.tt/18kka)
Founded in Sweden to celebrate Earth Hour 2011, the Earth Hour City Challenge initiative has been created to celebrate cities that are taking amazing steps forward in creating a greener, cleaner and more sustainable city to live and inspiring other cities to do the same.
Source: Ecopreneurist (http://s.tt/18kka)
- Gartner: 10 Key IT Trends for 2012 - Energy Efficiency and Monitoring is up to #3 on the list, from #7 last year.
Videos:
Founded in Sweden to celebrate Earth Hour 2011, the Earth Hour City Challenge initiative has been created to celebrate cities that are taking amazing steps forward in creating a greener, cleaner and more sustainable city to live and inspiring other cities to do the same.
Source: Ecopreneurist (http://s.tt/18kka)
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
This is the second in our series on brokering energy management collaboration between the Facilities and IT departments. You can see the first article here: Energy Management: Building a Bridge between Facilities and IT.
Though each of these departments has a different perspective on energy (facilities ensuring that costs are kept as low as possible, while still delivering the necessary amount of power to the company; IT delivering ever increasing computing capabilities to the business, while also maintaining service level agreements) they are not as incompatible as they appear on the surface. Bridging the gap between Facilities and IT begins with understanding that each speaks a different language.
While the term "Control Points" may be alien to the IT department, the IT equivalent "IP Addresses" is just as unfamiliar to the Facilities team. We believe that learning to speak the native language to the department being addressed will go a long way toward building a collaborative atmosphere between the two departments.
By simply understanding the vernacular, Facilities and IT teams can more easily collaborate and advance energy management initiatives for the organization. Below is a reference table to help Facilities and IT teams find common ground and start a meaningful conversation.
|
Term
|
Facilities
|
IT
|
|
Transport
|
Serial Interfaces RS242, 422, 485, etc
|
Ethernet
|
|
Control Systems
|
Building Mgmt, Facilities Mgmt
|
Systems Mgmt, Network Mgmt
|
|
Device References
|
Control Points
|
IP Addresses
|
|
Protocols
|
BACnet, Modbus and dozens of other open and proprietary protocols
|
TCP/IP
|
|
Environment
|
Hundreds that are more manually managed
|
Thousands of devices typically automated
|
One area of focus for the Facilities department that doesn't really have a corresponding IT term is Plug Load. Simply put, this is the amount of energy pulled from any electrical outlet in a building. In enterprise buildings, the plug load is typically utilized 40-60% of the entire energy usage and the remaining percentage is used by the building for lighting, and HVAC, etc. Of the plug load, 60-80% is utilized by IT devices.
|
Building Type
|
Facilities
|
Plug Load
|
|
Office
|
60%
|
40%
|
|
Data Center
|
40%
|
60%
|
By learning to understand the terms and primary concerns of each team, both Facilities and IT will have the basic building blocks to understand each other's roles and begin a dialogue to identify energy savings opportunities within the organization.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!
This is the first in a series of articles addressing the challenges faced by Facilities and IT departments when working together to implement energy management solutions. You can see the second article here: Facilities and IT: Learning to Speak the Language
When it comes to implementing Enterprise Energy Management, it is essential to have collaboration between the Facilities and IT groups within an organization. Though these departments deliver different services to the organization, they operate very similarly. Yet they rarely have the opportunity to work with one another. The IT department focuses on delivering compute services to all of the people in the organization, whereas the Facilities department provides management of physical space and power.
Both departments strive to deliver a reliable and stable service to the rest of the enterprise. The energy concerns of each department are different, however. Facilities needs to ensure that costs are kept as low as possible, while still delivering the necessary amount of power to the company. IT is under pressure to deliver ever increasing computing capabilities to the business, while also maintaining service level agreements.
The challenge here lies in the fact that an energy management implementation requires that IT act as a service provider to Facilities, since the Facilities organization is typically the economic benefactor. Facilities hasn't traditionally had the opportunity to work with IT as a service provider, because they generally don't have many projects that require IT for implementation.
In order to begin building a bridge between IT and Facilities, it is important to understand some key differences between these groups.
Some of the key differences between these departments are:
Energy Capacity Planning
When Facilities plans for energy needs, the determination is based on Power Per Square Foot or Power Per User. They typically use a standard power calculation of X watts per square foot, based on office building or data center, etc. or allocation of power per user. This metric allows Facilities to determine the energy needs of a building.
IT generally does not worry about the amount of power needed until or unless they need more.
Device Management
Although building management systems automate many of the larger devices in the facility, the majority of devices in facilities are manually managed.
In IT, there is not a single device that isn’t managed by something. IT typically has thousands of devices to manage, but facilities have hundreds of large devices.
Budget
The network-connected energy management platform is an IT product, but Facilities typically gets the budget relief of any energy savings. In general, IT does not own the energy management budget in the company; Facilities does.
Since energy is provided, managed, and budgeted through Facilities, this department now has to utilize IT as a service organization the same way all of the other business units do. We believe that there is plenty of common ground between these departments, making this an opportunity to for both groups to collaborate on reducing energy consumption and providing a more sustainable IT infrastructure.
Is your company managing energy between these departments? To what degree do you find collaboration between IT and Facilities within your organization? Leave a comment below and tell us how it’s going.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the JouleX IT Blog. We hope you'll join us on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to our RSS Feed! We look forward to joining you in the Green IT conversation!