The secondary and tertiary sectors (industry and services) in Europe account together for 39% of the total energy consumption. These sectors represent a large energy saving potential currently estimated at 20-30%. In energy-intensive industry sectors, such as chemical, cement and steel industries, CO2 emission reductions of up to 80% or more are estimated possible. Within the framework of the Energy Efficiency Directive the EU has made the increase of energy efficiency in those sectors among one of its top priorities. Energy audits are now mandatory for all large enterprises. To measure and monitor the energy consumption of large enterprises, public organisations and buildings and industries, an Energy Management System (EMS) is nowadays an indispensable tool. However, in practice, we are observing 2 main problems hindering the implementation of energy efficiency:
A) Current EMS systems on the market are cruelly lacking intelligence. The systems require high analysis efforts for energy managers and do not offer a meaningful, intelligent assessment of consumption data. For large organisations where energy management requires the monitoring of various consumer units, this considerably slows down and limits the correction of errors or maladjustments and thereby hinders the improvement of energy efficiency.
B) EMS solutions are not broadly used in the EU, despite their high potential to increase energy efficiency. Currently, about 50% of EMS certifications in Europe are only established in organisations from Germany. The other countries are, considering the sum of their economic strength, far underrepresented in the numbers of European certifications. The proliferation of such systems is still largely expandable in many parts of Europe. One cause of such a result is the necessity of the market penetration of a simple, effective and intelligent EMS solution that would finally make energy management a meaningful instrument to realise real energy efficiency.
These described tendencies and the current market situation result in the following business opportunity: large enterprises, public entities and energy-intensive industries in Europe need urgently a simple and intelligent EMS solution to finally make the increase of energy efficiency a reality. This is the challenge we are willing to tackle in the Next-EMS project.
Starting already in 1997 with developments in energy controlling software, the German company IngSoft is a pioneer in EMS. Its highly innovative EMS software named “IngSoft InterWatt” has numerous intelligent functions. It helps users to easily identify potential energy savings, to optimise the energy consumption and to reduce the related costs. Besides this high performance, it provides an additional, up-to-this-day unique feature: the automatic pattern recognition of energy consumption data. This module detects anomalies in energy consumption without requiring manual screening of all consumption data anymore and a detailed definition of target and limit values by the user. This allows users for an appropriate short-, medium- and long-term reaction and helps employing short economic resources to increase energy efficiency purposefully and analyse, improve and maintain energy efficiency. This is up to this day unique in the field of energy management.
The aim of the overall innovation project is to introduce the software solution in the EU market and thus to support the efforts in terms of CO2 reduction and energy efficiency improvements in the EU. The automatisms and the effective process support will help EMS systems to reach breakthrough across Europe and therefore provide the silver bullet in preventing unnecessary energy consumption, thus representing a CO2 reduction. The technology should raise deferred savings through the introduction of appropriate energy management processes in Europe.
Aim of this phase 1 project was to identify, in a feasibility study, the potential of the innovative solution IngSoft InterWatt, developed by IngSoft, in predefined European markets and the elaboration of a business plan for its successful market introduction. The feasibility study has substantiated and confirmed the technological and commercial viability of the business innovation project. Therefore, the business innovation project shall continue.
