New EMS Capabilities for the Decarbonized Energy Future

The energy marketplace is quickly evolving with the need to maintain reliability amid deregulation, the need to decarbonize, and the growth of distributed energy resources (DER). Customer needs and expectations are also evolving as pressure increases to manage costs, increase reliability, and achieve environmental goals. To address these shifts, energy management systems (EMSs) used by commercial and industrial (C&I) customers are expected to evolve too. The following are several areas where EMS capabilities are likely to evolve.

Planning to Obtain Lower Cost Energy with Higher Reliability

AI technology is used in many environments to improve performance and reduce waste. Within residences, homeowners are increasingly relying on advanced thermostats and home energy management systems to autonomously adjust conditions without negatively affecting comfort within the home.

AI technology can also be applied to the C&I environment, but the challenge is that the C&I environment is much more complex. Electrical equipment and its uses are far more diverse than the loads used in residences, and demand patterns do not necessarily follow standard daily routines. Still, basic principles apply. The EMS keeps historical usage behavior, and the manufacturing planning system can inform the EMS about scheduled production. The AI embedded within EMSs can monitor for opportunities to save power and find low cost power generation sources. 

The information from AI enables the facility to move from passively using power from the local grid at set prices to collaborating with available power sources within the region at better prices. Such advanced planning uses the intelligence within the EMS to prepare usage forecasts for power suppliers that allow the energy ecosystem to operate more efficiently.

Managing DER Proliferation

Facilities have historically used grid power if available and switched to a backup genset if not. Today, organizations have many more DER options to generate energy onsite, including solar panels on rooftops, local battery storage from EVs or dedicated storage batteries, intelligent gensets, and combined heat and power plants. Guidehouse Insights maintains a database on global DER deployments, and its forecast shows continued growth across the spectrum of technologies. Advanced EMSs enable organizations to manage and optimize these options.

In addition, a facility may have a variety of ways to sell surplus power back to the local power utility depending upon its location in the same way that residences with solar panels sell their surplus power. The economics of selling surplus power enable the facility to acquire more equipment that supports resiliency goals at a lower cost. The EMS enables the management and optimization of such surplus power sales. EMSs of the future will likely manage energy acquisition and sales that best meet the organization's needs with state-of-the-art security by leveraging advanced technology such as blockchain.

Bringing the Capabilities Together

These are some of the major changes underway, but several more changes are affecting EMS capabilities. EMS vendors must be committed to maintaining and updating their technology to accommodate these changes. Guidehouse Insights’ webinar on January 19 and 20, The Growing Impact of EMS Solutions: The Future of EMS, presents more detail on the new capabilities that the industry can anticipate for advanced EMSs.