Q: What is ‘energy resilience’ and why is it so important at the moment?
A: Energy resilience is all about ensuring a continuous and dependable source of energy – no matter what challenges might arise. Often, this means having one or more sources of ‘backup’ power. Often, this is electricity from on-site renewable generation or other off-site sources, or a blend of both. Ultimately, the aim is to minimize (as much as possible) the chance of a business suffering a complete power failure.
Energy resilience is a phrase also used in discussions about the possible reasons for power outages – ranging from power surges to weather damage, natural disasters and accidents. However, in the last two years, several other critical aspects have come under the spotlight: cyclical energy shortages, which began as a result of production cuts at the start of the pandemic. On top of this are political-related energy supply problems, which have obviously become a headline issue with Russia’s threats to cut off energy supply to various countries in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
Q: How can my building(s) become part of an energy resilience strategy?
- The best place to start is to make sure you have a diversified approach to energy supply across your building estate. For example, you might consider integrating onsite renewables and modern alternatives to fossil fuels (biofuels) into your energy mix. Typically, the larger your estate, and the greater your energy requirements, the more important this issue becomes. However, with all the uncertainty in the world, energy resilience is not something any business can afford to ignore.
- Inside the building there is much you can do. This needs to start with a focus on reducing your energy demand. It’s vital to eliminate energy waste and to use energy in the most cost-efficient way possible.
This is one of the major reasons we have invested so significantly in our range of Priva Digital Services which make it much easier to control and optimize your building systems via a data-driven approach.
Next, there is our ongoing collaboration with sustainable energy management specialist ErbisOne, which has resulted in the innovative Priva Energy Insight by ErbisOne solution (2).
Q: How can Priva Energy Insight by ErbisOne help companies reinforce their energy resilience?
Priva Energy Insight by ErbisOne is all about collecting data from the widest range of sources. This includes building management systems, sensors, climate systems and elsewhere. This allows you to gain deeper insight into your building’s use of energy. This is all backed up by automatic, and if necessary, manual, validation to ensure that the data provided is completely accurate.
By bringing all of these elements together, Priva is offering a solution that is fully in keeping with the smart energy movement. Monitoring and reducing consumption, improving efficiency, and making it easier to utilize alternative energy sources are among the advantages of this platform, which we are now seeing being widely used across the corporate world.
Be in no doubt: it’s now clear that any decent energy resilience strategy has to prioritize making your building estate more efficient, and reducing energy requirements wherever possible. It is a big step-change, and one that cannot be achieved without access to comprehensive data.
With solutions such as Priva Energy Insight by ErbisOne, the means by which to obtain that data is now within reach of companies everywhere – regardless of their size or sector. Let the resilience revolution begin!
Sources:
(1) https://www.priva.com/solutions/building-automation/priva-digital-services
