May 2010 |
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EMAIL INTERVIEW - August Flanagan & Ken Sinclair
August Flanagan, Director of Online Marketing, eComponents Technology Inc.
He holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Washington, and has conducted research projects geared towards finding efficient ways to produce second generation biofuels. He worked on the development of eComponents Technology's greenhouse gas reporting software, and authored their online technical manual. He is based in Vancouver B.C.
Enterprise Energy Management
Our energy management software package, enables our clients to reduce their energy consumption, cost, and greenhouse gas emissions through accurate metering, monitoring, reporting, and analysis of energy consumption and the related costs.
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Sinclair: For our readers who might not know about eComponents Technology can you tell us a little bit about the company?
Flanagan: eComponents Technology is a leading international provider of enterprise energy management software and services. Our energy management software package, known as EIS Server Software Suite™, enables our clients to reduce their energy consumption, cost, and greenhouse gas emissions through accurate metering, monitoring, reporting, and analysis of energy consumption and the related costs.
We started in 1996 as an engineering software developer for Demand-Side Management research projects. This led to the creation of the first version of EIS Server Software Suite™. We have been expanding and improving upon it ever since.
Sinclair: How do your products/services provide ROI to your customers?
Flanagan: Our software products and services prove the management principle, "What gets measured, gets managed". The foundation of an enterprise energy management plan is the capability to understand the organization's energy consumption and cost drivers. That is why energy metering and monitoring is an ENERGY STAR "Best Practice", and eComponents is proud to be an official ENERGY STAR partner and provider of automate benchmarking services.
When implementing an enterprise energy management strategy there are several key steps that must be carried out:
Identifying energy use baselines (benchmarking)
Identifying energy efficiency opportunities
Implementing policies and programs
Measuring results
We provide the infrastructure necessary to complete every step of this process by enabling monitoring, reporting, and analysis of energy consumption and cost. Additionally, we provide powerful tools that help our clients forecast energy supply needs, benchmark facility performance across the enterprise, identify savings opportunities, analyze savings from energy efficiency programs and verify utility bills.
EIS Server Software Suite™ is available on a subscription basis, hosted and managed from a secure data center. There is no computer hardware or software to install or maintain, making it a cost effective solution to energy management. But subscription software doesn't meet everyone's needs. Our company also offers a turn-key server appliance product, for installation on secure private networks, reducing the cost of implementation and further increasing the return on investment.
Sinclair: Expand further on your enterprise reporting and benchmarking tools.
Flanagan: Our energy benchmarking reports enable our clients to understand facility and enterprise level energy use and implement energy management strategies, and track the effects of these strategies at both the facility and enterprise level. This is important for enterprises that operate a variety of facility types and therefore must develop different energy management strategies at a facility level, while striving to reach enterprise energy reduction goals.
Enterprise level reports include greenhouse gas emissions reporting and benchmarking. These reports are used to help prepare Corporate Environmental Reports (CER's), which communicate a company's environmental performance, and demonstrate a company-wide commitment to corporate responsibility and an effort to reduce its environmental impact.
[an error occurred while processing this directive] Sinclair: What changes have you observed over the last 15 years as a provider of energy management systems?
Flanagan: On the technical side, the biggest change has been the migration of services away from desktop and workgroup applications to the Internet. We now have a global communications infrastructure that enables enterprise energy management systems at a fraction of the cost compared to 15 years ago.
However, the biggest changes that we have seen have been on the non-technical side. Utility deregulation significantly increased the awareness of, and demand for, energy metering and monitoring. And the growing consensus on global warming has influenced many organizations to incorporate greenhouse gas emissions into statements of corporate responsibility. Along with this growth has come an increased demand for enterprise-wide energy reporting.
Sinclair: What are some future developments your company is working on?
Flanagan: As we continue to develop our energy management systems we are placing an emphasis on improving our real-time energy dashboards and savings verifications tools. To further help our clients reduce their energy consumption and costs we are always looking for new strategic partners whose services are complimentary to our own.
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