Did you read our article with the 3 phases of an energy management plan for banks? So now the next thing you need to know about Energy and Banks are the key tools with which to perform Advanced Energy Analysis in Banking. We recommend you at least to use these 7!
Here’s our list of 7 energy analysis tools for Banks:
1 – Calculating associated costs and comparing them with monthly bills
The utility bills arrive at the purchase department of your bank with different frequencies. However, the financial manager wants to have an estimate of costs for this month (or quarter, or year) as soon as possible.
In addition, your colleague who is responsible for purchasing wants to be able to compare the bill received from the supplier with what was actually consumed.
How much work would this mean for the person responsible for purchasing energy if they had to read the values from the meter, creating an Excel spreadsheet, downloading data from the platform of each utility company, etc.? Just imagine.
The ideal thing for banks is to automatically generate a bill simulation for each branch or office with a click, or even for each “Standard Branch Office” that you have defined in phase 2.
When you see this example, you will have a better understanding of the estimated bill model to which I refer, which is created automatically:
** In the Guide “Energy Management and Efficiency for Banking” you will find explained and detailed each of the parts of the invoice simulation.**
DEXMA allows you to generate this simulation with one particularity; it can be generated on demand or automatically for the period that you determine. And, as it is a multi-energy source platform, you can also generate it for water and gas.
This functionality will also help you estimate the energy purchases for your branches and offices for the next period.
2 – Calculation of Indicators, Ratios, EnPIs…
The calculation and monitoring of indicators or energy ratios is essential to be able to check if your bank is meeting the energy efficiency or SMART objectives. And not only that, also to be able to compare the efficiency among your branches, for example, which branches are the most efficient, those in Bilbao or those in Barcelona? Why?
These indicators will help you to achieve energy benchmarking for your offices and branches. The indicators used in energy management are known as EnPIs (Energy Performance Indicators) or IDE (Energy Performance Indicators).
EnPIs should be calculated specifically for the energy efficiency project of your particular bank. In addition, they must meet two other characteristics: that they are measured simply and frequently, and that they are relevant indicators for the facilities of your branches and bank offices.
What metrics do you use to know if your branches are efficient? There are a number of EnPIs that can help you:
- Ratios per parameter. For example in the corporate office building, the ratio per floor in use.
- Constant ratio. In the same office building, it would be the ratio but calculated for the whole building. Regardless of its occupancy rate.
- Key figure by date range. For example, employees of a company. This is a variable ratio, which can increase or decrease by periods.
The calculation and monitoring of these indicators help to normalise consumption and thus discover which Energy Performance Indicators (EnPI’s) or KPI’s (Key Performances Indicators) are important for your bank.
Then, why use them? Some examples are to benchmark the KPI consumption divided between surface and day degrees to find out if your branches in London are more or less efficient than those in Manchester. You can also assess what energy they consume per employee.
Another challenge we find in energy management in banking in 99.999999% of cases is to ensure the proper functioning of the global climate system. How to do it? The key is to be able to see the ratios and regressive performance indicators.
With DEXMA Energy Intelligence Platform you can create reports with the data of these ratios on demand (whenever you want and need it) or based on a location.
These reports calculate the regression between the external temperature and the consumption of the climate system for a given period, for cooling and heating zones. As a base, the reference temperatures configured for the location are taken. In this way, inefficiencies or anomalies are quickly detected.
3 – Measurement and Verification with IPMV to Compare and Control your Suppliers
In projects with thousands of branches and several corporate headquarters, it is usual for the bank to use one or more maintenance companies (or Facility Management companies) to carry out energy management in the field.
When you work with this type of external provider it is usual to reach a remuneration agreement linked to the results. That is, to the savings generated.
So how do you agree with the energy management company on the value of the savings you have generated? We advise you to follow the IPMVP protocol. These initials stand for International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol. It was developed by the Efficiency Valuation Organisation (EVO).
The key to the IPMVP protocol is that it proposes four measurement and verification options to apply in each of the energy improvements that you establish with your energy management service.
With these measurement options the finance, purchasing or energy manager can verify the savings of each energy saving measure, individually. That is, working by project.
Couldn’t it be interesting if the supervisor of the energy efficiency project of your bank was able to separately verify the savings after investing in solar energy and an in new HVAC machine? And branch by branch across those in your portfolio?
With DEXMA you can do this, since it offers you a specific IPMVP module for monitoring energy saving by project or action.
4 – Consumption Forecasting
If you read our article “7 Energy Management Challenges in Banking”, one of the challenges of the banking sector is for the purchasing department to get a competitive price from the utility companies to achieve the lowest possible energy cost.
But, how to know what price to negotiate?
The secret lies in anticipating them thanks to the possibility of predicting energy consumption. If purchases already have an idea of the energy consumption it is going to have, it can negotiate on this basis.
This is of interest not only to the facility manager and the energy manager of your offices but also to the finance director, who wants to be able to close their forecasts for cash, balance sheets, etc. as soon as possible. And if it is possible to “fine-tune” and use figures that are as realistic as possible, then so much the better.
You can do this with an energy consumption forecasting tool provided that:
- It is smart and proactive. It must be able to feedback with changes and be based on a model that learns the behaviour of the building.
- It works in real time (with 4-hourly data).
Both features are available with DEXMA. This app uses AI algorithms and machine learning to calculate and refine until as much as possible the forecasts of energy behaviour of each of your branches.
5 – Consumption during Public Holidays and Outside Business Hours (Operating hours)
What happens in the branches when you’re not there?
One of the concerns of the energy managers – or facility managers – in banks is what happens in their offices or bank offices while they are closed. In addition, depending on the number of branches, financiers will also be very interested in reducing this consumption.
No need to worry, the new Apps developed in energy management will prevent this problem. Energy managers, facility managers and maintenance managers will no longer have to make routine visits to the branches during closing times to check that everything is OK.
With the DEXMA energy consumption monitoring functionality, energy managers can know what is happening. This advanced analysis will also be key to verify the proper functioning of the control and automation systems installed in the offices.
With this functionality called “Operating Hours”, the manager and facility manager can configure alerts that notify them when there is energy consumption in the bank offices outside working hours. Or if they prefer, they can create a customised report that tells them how much energy is consumed at weekends.
Enhancing predictive maintenance (FDD) is simpler if energy management is digitalised. Process and maintenance operations are rendered more efficient (they take up less time). Why?
- Energy consumption and comfort information is detected proactively and automated with alerts
- Digitalisation increases the visibility of the energy saving plan in the administration. This helps everyone to be involved in energy saving. For example, like our partner SMS-PLC does with Banco Santander in the United Kingdom.
6 – Calculation of the carbon footprint (Carbon reporting)
There are increasing legal requirements regarding the energy consumption of large companies and their greenhouse gas emissions.
Banking is one of the sectors most affected by these laws. These are mostly based on the impact that energy consumption has on CO2 production. In other words, the calculation of your bank’s carbon footprint.
So your energy management technology should be able to help you to:
- Convert the energy consumed into greenhouse gas emissions
- Propose emission reduction targets and track them in real time
- Generate reports on carbon emissions automatically (and that you can customise by building or customer).
At DEXMA, a while ago we started examining the needs of all those who must comply with these laws. Therefore, with DEXMA you can analyse the emissions of all your offices and branches.
7 – Customised Reports
What is the use of carrying out all the previous analyses if only you or the energy manager knows them? It would be like a half-finished job, the transmission of information between departments is key.
For a bank, as in any company, it is essential to communicate the results obtained to the rest of the organisation.
That is why the ability to generate customised reports through energy management software is very important.
First of all these reports are useful for your own team and company. This will help you to:
- Keep all departments aligned.
- Give visibility to the work you do, whether you are the energy manager, the facility manager or the person responsible for energy purchases.
Now that you know all these energy analysis tools for Banks, you may want to expand the information you have found here with the Specialised Guide to the Sector we recently created. Just click below:
