Enterprise Energy Management System: IBM

The business case IBM's Real Estate and Site Operations group, responsible for energy management programs across the company's operations, executes a robust energy conservation program. To meet the company's goal of achieving annual energy use avoidance and reductions equivalent to 3.5% of the company's energy use in 2007, the group implemented an Enterprise Energy Management System (EEMS) to enable real time energy use monitoring at IBM locations. This system has enabled IBM to identify more than 105 energy conservation projects over 2005 and 2006 that resulted in a total savings of 16,500 MWh of electricity and US$ 1.35 million for the company.

The IBM Real Estate and Site Operations (RESO) group is responsible for energy management programs across IBM's operations. The energy management team has energy engineers assigned to major locations and regions that cover all of IBM's major operations.

This team executes a robust energy conservation program that is responsible for IBM's strong energy conservation results against the IBM internal goal of achieving annual energy use avoidance and reductions equivalent to 3.5% of IBM's energy use for that year.

While the team runs a structured program to evaluate and implement energy conservation activities across IBM's global operations, there was limited real time metering data available from operating facilities with which to track and analyze variations in electrical use over a day, a week or a season.

A project was developed and justified to install additional meters (where needed) and hook up available meters at 20 large facilities into a central data collection and display system – the Enterprise Energy Management System (EEMS).

Setting the targets

Through the Enterprise Energy Management System the RESO group aimed to:

• Collect and analyze all electrical meter data from 20 large, electrical using facilities in the United States in the first year of the project and add four additional locations to the database system in the program's second year.
• Achieve an annual 1% reduction in electrical energy use through conservation projects identified from the analysis of the real time metering data at the participating facilities.

The conservation opportunities

IBM's energy conservation program provided an effective methodology to analyze energy conservation opportunities at an operating system level.

For example, the engineering team was adept at reviewing and implementing known hardware and operating level energy efficiency opportunities: high-efficiency fluorescent lighting systems, time of day building controls, variable speed fans, high-efficiency pumps, etc.

However, there was no robust methodology for performing ongoing optimization of building and system operations that would utilize real-time baseline energy use from a regular, periodic (every 15 minutes) collection of building, system and facility level electrical use.

Collection of electrical use over the day provides a view into two important factors – anomalies in energy use such as short-term transients of high electrical use and increases in electrical use over time against a baseline electrical use profile.

The energy management team engaged an energy management software system provider to implement a real-time electrical use monitoring system. Based on discussions with the supplier and the experience of their clients, it was estimated that energy savings of 1% per year could be identified and captured through analysis of the collected data.

The energy management team installed additional meters (where needed), connected them to the IBM intranet, and collected 15-minute electrical use data from system, building and facility level meters at 20 locations in the United States.

During the second year of the program, an additional four sites were connected to the system. Presently, the energy management team is evaluating additional locations and systems where real-time metering may have the potential to identify energy savings opportunities. A specific area of interest is metering data center systems and operations.

Results

The EEMS system enabled IBM to identify over 105 energy conservation projects over 2005 and 2006 that resulted in a total savings of 16,500 MWH of electricity and US$1.35 million.

Lessons learned

The implementation of the EEMS data collection system demonstrated that real-time collection and display of energy-use data could reveal energy-use patterns that are not seen through a review of the monthly utility bills. Real-time evaluation of energy use can identify intermittent patterns or gradual changes in established baseline energy use that indicate opportunities to reduce energy consumption.

This case study is part of a series of WBCSD member company good practice examples on energy efficiency.

• Full case study ( 339 kb)

Author WBCSD Publication Date 11 Aug 2008 Document Type Case studies Issue/Topic Energy & Climate Energy Efficiency in Buildings Technology/Innovation Company IBM Corporation Source WBCSD Include In RSS WBCSD News & Updates Sustainable Development Case Studies		339 kb