Energy Performance Management Solutions

The Joule Energy Performance Management Suite enables a number of different solutions, including carbon footprint and greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting (Enterprise Carbon Accounting), building efficiency determinations, waste and water, solar, wind and biomass, fuel cell, as well as logistics and transportation modeling scenarios.

Carbon Footprint and GHG Reporting

The included Joule Buildings and Sites Energy Performance Model has everything you need for simple reporting, helping your company prepare a GHG inventory through the use of standardized roles and processes. A simple workflow-driven application process facilitates the interactions between site administrators and facilities specialists, enabling staff to quickly meet third-party audit requirements that cover Scopes 1 through 3, as defined by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). A CDP-format report is generated to a Wiki, ready for direct submission to the EPA for the mandatory 2010 GHG Reporting Compliance.

Building Efficiency

Determining the energy efficiencies of different buildings is a complicated and potentially labor-intensive process. Joule Labs helps companies manage this process by providing fully integrated building, envelope, HVAC, and emissions simulation programs. The applications provide support for rectangular geometry for walls, roofs, ceilings, floors, windows, and shading, thermochromic windows, Under Floor (UFAD) modeling, a range of extensive HVAC capabilities and data sets, as well as Standard 62.1 demand control ventilation.

The solution also accurately accounts for interactions across categories, such as investments in better insulation with correspondingly smaller HVAC loads, and examines realistic options for building efficiency and solar options, as well as calculations for optimal designs leading to a range of energy savings, from a base case to zero net.

Renewable Energy Sources

The Joule Solar, Wind, and Biomass application provides a range of physical models and simulators licensed from the U.S. National Renewables Energy Labs, Dept. of Energy. Twenty-five solar modules including Ambient Thermal, Water Thermal, Vent Pre-Heat, Flat Photovoltaic, Concentrated Photo-voltaic, Daylighting, and more are all included as part of the renewable energy solution. Ten wind modules include features such as Flow Cooling and Multi-type Electric Generators, while biomass modules include support for Anaerobic Digesters and Biomass Gasifiers. Simulators are combined with geography-specific weather and use profiles to provide accurate yield predictions worldwide.

Waste and Water

Joule Energy Performance Management Suite also provides a Waste and Water module that extends GHG inventory reporting to cover water drinking and waste. The application provides extensive inventory of GHG impact conversion for water-born chemicals, including templates for recycled water usage for light agricultural, as well as decorative ponds and fountains.

The module also supports the tracking of refuse in several categories with extensive inventory of GHG impact conversions, while also providing insight the impact and benefits of recycling initiatives.

Fuel Cell, Refrigeration, and Transportation

Joule Labs also offers other applications for fuel cell, refrigeration, as well as logistics and transporation analysis. The Fuel Cell application models several commercially available fuel cell systems, while the Logistics and Transportation enables fleet energy business analysts to capture total spending, maximize transport efficiency, and make individual efficiency recommendations. These simulations can also be used with other modules in the Joule Energy Performance Management suite.

Joule Refrigeration contains several models including warehouse, commercial, retail, and in-built transportation.

Energy Performance Management

Companies are feeling the pressure to chart their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from regulators, investors, and even consumers. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a non-profit organization that encourages businesses to report their GHG emissions, received data from 245 companies in 2003.  By 2008, that figure had increased almost tenfold to 2,200.

The most obvious pressures are regulatory. Under initiatives such as the European Union's emissions trading scheme, participating companies must provide data site by site. Upcoming cap-and-trade schemes in Australia and the U.S. are expected to carry similar obligations.

One of the major challenges that organizations face in dealing with these varying requirements is the lack of both an integrated business process and an associated system of record for the holistic management of energy.  A new business model is emerging as organizations begin to manage energy as an asset rather than a consumable resource: energy performance management.

Energy Performance Management - Process Summary

 

Organizations vary considerably in their approaches to managing energy - the more advanced companies in this field will typically have a strategy and some initial goals. Data collection of all the associated energy related assets is often the first requirement, and companies usually struggle to calculate, manage and report on their energy expenditures, often resorting to multiple spreadsheets to keep track of GHG emissions across the enterprise and their wider supply chains.  Optimizing energy procurement is equally challenging as is enabling interaction between energy providers and energy users to reduce energy usage and implement effective DR programs. 

Once reporting and initial analysis has been undertaken, organizations may then file reports to show the extent to which they comply to specific regulations or protocols, and they may elect to use this information as part of their wider reporting and communications. Having managed to determine, analyze and report on their carbon footprint and other GHG emissions, they are then faced with the ongoing challenging of determining how to plan and optimize energy efficiency and which renewable projects should be given priority given wider strategic business objectives. 

Managing energy as a performing asset is a complex issue and requires sophisticated algorithms and engines to generate the alternative strategies available for decision makers. It is this process and the associated challenges that the Joule Energy Performance Management Suite is designed to automate, assisting decision makers understand alternative scenarios through advanced analytics, physical modeling and econometrics, and then using these results to help select appropriate energy management strategies. In doing so, organizations can create sustainable competitive advantage, manage risk, reduce costs, and optimize their energy strategies while improving business performance.

Joule Energy Performance Management Suite

Joule Labs has partnered with the world renowned US National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) to offer the market a unique, state of the art, cloud based, energy performance management suite of web applications.  Using models, data and analysis tools jointly developed with NREL, Joule Labs has built an integrated, scalable, cloud powered suite of web based, on demand applications for managing and optimizing energy strategy, emissions, costs and compliance. 

However, unlike other carbon accounting solutions, the Energy Performance Management Suite also provides advanced energy analytics, sophisticated physical modeling and state of the art econometrics, to help organizations optimize alternative energy scenarios in order to determine go forward solutions for improving and sustaining business performance. Built on a open data model, the Joule Energy Performance Management Suite can integrate with existing enterprise and other data sources, speeding time to compliance, reducing risks and costs, while increasing brand value through the ability to implement environmentally responsible operations.

Joule Energy Performance Management Suite

The Joule Energy Performance Management Suite (EPMS) consists of the following applications:

• Joule Energy Performance Portal
• Joule Building & Sites
• Joule Building Efficiency
• Joule Solar, Wind & Biomass
• Joule Water & Waste
• Joule Fuel Cell
• Joule Logistics & Transportation
• Joule Refrigeration

which are built within the cloud computing fabric. Underpinning these applications is the Joule Energy Foundation, which consists of the Joule Energy Model and Data Warehouse, the highly sophisticated Joule Analytics Optimization Engine, and the Joule Collections and Reporting Engine. These engines drive the supporting business algorithms and logic in and across the different modules, providing the necessary information for the analytics applications collated from a wide range of sources, while enabling integration across the different applications.

Joule Energy Performance Management Suite - On Demand, Cloud-Based

—Bill Penden