Public Administration is a sector with great potential for energy savings: large buildings, geographically dispersed, old equipment… Furthermore, they have the need, not only for their budget, but ethically, to save energy and be more efficient. Today we present you an implementation success story from our partner CIAS COM for the Ministry of Justice of the Spanish Government, who has saved 22% in their electric bills.
The Energy Challenge of the Ministry of Justice
Just over a year ago the Ministry of Justice decided to take a step to professionalize their energy management.
Our partner, CIAS COM, was the company chosen to help to define and deploy the project. At that time, the main problems of the Ministry of Justice’s energy levels were:
- Multiple buildings, without a control center
- Fragmented Contracts especially in regards to electricity, with different providers and contracted rates
- Lack of personal media specialising in energy management
This situation was damaging the public administration in three ways. First, there was not a place to display, analyse, and understand what was happening with the energy consumption.
Second, the Ministry of Justice had management contracts distributed between the various regional offices. This hurt them as they had greater contracted powers than necessary and more partners with whom to speak during the incidents, and prevented coordination of the validation of electric bills.
Lastly, the lack of a real time analytical system made it impossible to be proactive in correcting problems before an incident occurred in order to avoid extra billing costs.
The CIAS COM Solution for the Ministry of Justice
CIAS COM is a consulting expert in facility management projects who helps companies improve management of general services in large government and private organisations. The commissioned project addressed almost 300 buildings throughout the country.
Their work was aimed at two essential phases of the energy management plans: monitoring what is happening and optimising energy consumption. In the monitoring plan, they added a variable of complexity to the project. In Public Administration, the security and data networks always call for “extra” work when defining a strategy for energy management.
In the case of the Ministry of Justice, their network (high security) meant working out more details in the communication strategy between the meters and the DEXMA analysis platform.
The optimisation phase, which began with the grouping of all contracts with energy suppliers, advanced to including the installation of capacitor banks and replacement of high consumption equipment with more efficient ones. Of course, the process also included corrective measurements and training to change behaviour for misuse of energy resources, conducting training sessions at the plant facility centers, etc. With these measures they avoided unnecessary consumption: computers that never turn off, lights that are on when not needed…
The results of this success speak for itself. The plan and implementation by CIAS COM has generated a savings of 1,541,572€, this amount represents a consolidated savings of 22%.
Currently, 70% of the Ministry of Justice’s electricity consumption is monitored. This means there is still 30% which requires action similar to the energy savings mentioned.
But the energy savings project of this institution will not end there, as they can continue to apply measures and tools to evolve the optimisation phase, generating better savings and consolidation each time.
“We are very satisfied with the support with which the CIAS COM consultant provides us to control and optimise the management of the general service contracts in the almost 300 judicial buildings which make up the Regional Offices of the Ministry of Justice, those of which have enabled us significant cost savings and improved the quality of the services of facility maintenance, energy supplies, cleaning buildings, elevators, security and surveillance, and others.” – JUAN JOSÉ DE LA PEÑA Head of Procurement – SG of Economic Resources of the Administration of Justice
Technology Implemented in the Project
In this project, the following technology was utilised:
- Hardware
- Client’s fiscal meters
- DEXGate, DEXGate2
- Software:
- DEXMA Platform (you can access the DEMO here)
To learn more about CIAS COM we recommend that you visit their website.
