The story is the same everywhere – as expenses are reduced in every branch of business, the pressure to “eradicate” some of the professions increases. We are no longer surprised to see self-checkout counters in supermarkets instead of real people. Alternatively, we do not even need a brick-and-mortar shops as we do our grocery shopping online. Like watchmen or scriveners in the past, clerks have also become an endangered species. Is this the case of power engineers as well?

Are you curious enough? Every human being is born with innate curiosity. Right from the moment of our birth, we start exploring and learning. Unfortunately, as we get older, most of us gradually lose our curiosity. Possibly because we use the proverb “Curiosity killed the cat”. However, curiosity is a key factor in achieving energy efficiency. Let us take an example: an administrative building with tenants and an administrator, whose task from his position of the representative of the owner is to divide energy expenses between the individual tenants so that there is no remainder.

There is an old saying that appears in almost all books on management: There is no management without measurement. This rule is crucial in energy management. When information (energy data) is accurate, readily available and reliable, good decisions are much easier to make. Though manual readings are often incomplete and unreliable, many companies still depend on them, even if millions of CZK worth of investments are at stake. Automatic, precise reading of energy meters brings the question of energy management, energy consumption and expenses to a whole new level.

Are you a property manager, facility manager, building administrator or a building owner? Then you have most likely already dealt with the question of how to collect energy data from your building in an efficient way. Manual meter reading carried out by a technician is still the most widely used method. However, this obsolete method is, in some ways, unreliable and time- and money-consuming, and the larger the portfolio of administered buildings, the more difficult the reading gets.