Enterprise Energy Management (EEM) System is a combination of software, data acquisition hardware, and communication systems to collect, analyze and display building information to aid commercial building energy managers, facility managers, financial managers and electric utilities in reducing energy use and costs in buildings. This technology helps perform key energy management functions such as organizing energy use data, identifying energy consumption anomalies, managing energy costs, and automating demand response strategies. Compared to other data archive and visualization systems, EEM is more tied-in to business enterprise information such as; facilitating energy benchmarking, optimizing utility procurement, and managing overall energy costs.
During recent years, numerous developers and vendors of EEM have been deploying these products in a highly competitive market. EEM offer various software applications and services for a variety of purposes. Costs for such systems vary greatly depending on the system’s capabilities and how they are marketed. In spring 2004, Del Monte Foods received funding from State Technologies Advancement Collaborative (STAC) to install an EEM system at one of their food processing plants. Del Monte asked Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to evaluate the EEM vendors. LBNL has been conducting survey and research on EEM (Motegi, 2003). Role of LBNL in this project is to develop a specification framework of EEM and its selection criteria and procedures, through the food processing plant’s case study.
