The operators of retail chains are facing a multitude of challenges. Among other things, it's about the different equipment, such as heating and cooling to coordinate, monitor and optimize. The energy consumption of the individual systems must be presented transparently for this purpose.

Besides being able to use exact billing of energy consumption with allocation to individual cost centers and tenants also benchmarking of branches is required. These metrics can be used actively for external representation in terms of energy savings and the associated commitment to the environment and climate protection.

The main objective of the use of an energy management system is to save energy costs. Many savings can be achieved by optimizing the already existing plant equipment. Furthermore steps must like the exchange of cooling or lighting equipment must be calculated in terms of their amortization. The familiar comfort - temperature, lighting and air quality - for customers and employees must be maintained.

Basis of the energy data collection are the energy meters. These are usually connected by bus to a locally installed e3m Box and read out there. Here is also the preliminary evaluation of the data, which in turn is as well transmitted to the e3m Data Center. The transfer of this data is typically done once a day, wherby alarms and limit violations are immediately communicated to the e3m Data Center and then forwarded to the appropriate maintenance personnel.

Due to the integrated Web server in the e3m box, the user has the posibility to access program schedulings or process charts and to be able to observe certain system conditions and to modify parameters.

The e3m Data Center stores the data in a powerful database, aggregating them and provides the data to users in the form of tables and graphs in a powerfol Web-Frontend. These views allow the energy balance of processes and properties and are suitable and fully configurable for the particular user groups.

The e3m Data Center can be installed on-site at the customer site or provided from us as a hosted Solution (SaaS).

Migros is the biggest retail companies in Switzerlander wherby two cooperatives with a total of 140 stores selected e3m as their energy management solution. The aim was to reduce the energy costs of about CHF 30 million per year.

Before the installation of e3m, the meters were read manually and the analysis took place in different Excel documents, with the disadvantage that excessive energy consumption could be determined only after months. Further on the operating and system optimization could only be done locally on site. The account of the individual consumption for the tenants and internal cost centers was complicated and very expensive.

By using e3m they are now in the position to centrally view the consumption of all individual markets. With the help of a centralised timemanagement to control building management systems, which are now operated by the actual store opening times, a significant reduction in the energy consumption could be achheved.

Extraordinary energy consumption will now be detected immediately and an alarm message is sent to the appropriate standby personnel. Additionally all important installations such as Intrusion detection system, fire alarms, refrigeration and HVAC systems, emergency exits and consumption meters are monitored centrally.

e3m is also in the situation, to automatically allocate the consumption costs to internal cost centers with interfaces to SAP and IBM Maximo.Thanks to its data trans- parency, now all the individual stores can be compared with their energy consumption and maintenance costs.