Background Story

As a major player in the hospitality industry, the client has taken the initiative to implement a solution for monitoring and managing energy consumption across its facilities in Jumeirah Beach Residences and Downtown Dubai. The client is eager to explore potential energy-saving opportunities to prevent the wastage of scarce energy resources due to inefficiencies across its facilities.

The client has engaged Ark Energy to digitize its energy management by monitoring energy performance, providing data analytics to optimize consumption, enabling automated energy and Measurement & Verification (M&V) reporting based on IPMVP standards, and integrating the energy management system into the Building Management System (BMS) to prevent data manipulation and ensure long-term data storage.
 

Problems
 

Some of the key concerns include:

• The adoption of cloud-based energy management software remains a challenge for large organizations due to cybersecurity risks

• A lack of technological awareness and concerns over privacy and security hinder widespread adoption by end users

Main Objective

The goal of this initiative is to integrate an energy management system that addresses the following client needs:
 

• Monitoring energy performance of equipment using machine learning
• Providing data analytics essential for optimizing energy consumption
• Offering energy management consulting support to identify savings potential
• Delivering a user-specific interface with a seamless dashboard and reporting experience
• Enabling automated energy and M&V reporting (IPMVP)
• Verifying data quality and validating communication with field sensors
• Integrating into BMS to prevent data manipulation and ensure secure, long-term data storage

By leveraging digitalization and machine learning analytics, the client can effectively monitor and manage its energy consumption while improving asset reliability.

 

Approach

Ark Energy has developed and follows a proprietary methodology focused on Connect, Customize, and Go-Live. Below is a summary of the tasks undertaken in this initiative.
 

Preliminary Data Assessment

During the initial assessment, Ark Energy identified 75 essential preliminary data points, with the option to integrate up to 500 data points based on a digitalization assessment and the client’s preferences

Table 1

Tasks Completed

Source: Ark Energy Analysis

Table 2

Critical Data Points Collected

Source: Ark Energy Analysis

A proprietary universal gateway with a data-capture API was integrated with the BMS to collect and transmit data to arkEMIS, linking sensor data and consolidating all sites onto a single, unified platform. Through UX/UI customization, Ark Energy ensured that arkEMIS was designed for a user-friendly and highly dynamic interface, enabling the visualization of key performance indicators (KPIs) and business metrics.

To ensure proper data governance, and in collaboration with client input, Ark Energy provided and implemented suggested access rights to ensure that the right data reaches the appropriate stakeholders while maintaining robust security

Table 3 

Suggested Access Rights provided by Ark Energy ensure that the right data reaches the right person while maintaining proper security

Results

The results that were generated from the project include the following:
 

• One unified platform for all facilities, OEM-independent
• Live Energy dashboard and data capture and visualization available anytime, anywhere, on any device with customized user experience
• Meters and sensors condition assessment, and data quality validation
• Independent and automated measurement and verifications of energy savings based on IPMVP standards
• State-of-the-art data analytics functionalities (including efficient operations simulations) to enable ISO50001
• Automated notifications, alarm triggers, anomalies and drift detection
• Automated root-cause analysis and work orders with AI capability
• Amazon Web Services hosting with state-of-the-art cyber security