aM&T – the tide turns?
November 1st 2006

Eliminating waste through aM&T can reduce energy use by 15%. As energy prices rise and the cost of aM&T packages fall there is no better time to look at the technology says Bill Gysin of Elcomponent

Formed from a fusion of submetering, data acquisition and M&T software, aM&T was a great idea, and like most great ideas, was in essence very simple. Everyone knew that if you didn't measure it, you couldn't manage it, and everyone knew that as a meter reading system, the man with a clipboard was never very effective and definitely not state of the art. Many also knew that in the last twenty years or so M&T software had achieved major savings across a wide variety of business, commercial and local authority applications without much in the way of automatic meter reading, so the combination of M&T with more detailed automatically acquired data was an obvious next step. The availability of halfhour readings from tariff electricity meters had proved conclusively that greater savings could be achieved where interval data were available, so if this capability could be extended to all utilities and to sub-meters as well as tariff meters, the potential was clearly considerable. The most difficult problem seemed to be finding a three letter acronym all the parties could agree on, but aM&T was eventually settled on after which the urgent priority was to launch the concept to the wider world, confident that it would be enthusiastically received.

Four years on that confidence has proved to be well founded. aM&T systems were added to the Energy Technology List (ETL) in 2003 making them eligible for the Enhanced Capital Allowance (ECA) tax break, providing a strong vote of confidence from the government in the effectiveness of the technology, as well as a worthwhile discount on the upfront cost.

It is highly significant that aM&T was the first, and remains the only ECA qualifying product that is not a 'fit and forget' technology. Even its most vociferous champions do not claim that aM&T works without human input, but this was the primary basis on which the ETL was compiled until aM&T was included. The reasons for inclusion are simple. Energy Management is no different from the management of anything else, in that data analysis is a fundamental part of it, and this was recognised by the keepers of the ETL.

aM&T extends the boundaries in terms of the acquisition and subsequent analysis of the necessary data (and therefore the savings that can be realised) and is proving to be the right product at the right time.

More data on their own, regardless of how easily or cheaply they may be acquired are not necessarily a good thing, and in many instances may prove to be precisely the opposite. More capability in terms of data acquisition must be balanced by a similar improvement in analysis and reporting, and this is precisely what has happened. The march of technology in respect of meters and networking has been matched by ever higher levels of performance from the software 'front end' of aM&T systems, resulting in the product as a whole offering much greater capability than was the case even three years ago.

Meters have become smarter while becoming cheaper, integrating easily into a wide variety of low-cost networking solutions, including standard Ethernet systems as well as more esoteric (but still low cost) options such as GSM, GPRS and VHF/UHF radio. 'Flash' memory provides virtually unlimited data storage, and the almost universal availability of broadband means that large amounts of data are easily transferred between sites or onto the web. The web itself provides unrivalled access to automatically acquired data for analysis and subsequent reporting, and provides the backbone for realtime exceptions reporting via text message or email.

Nevertheless, the reality is that while the overall capability and cost-effectiveness of aM&T continues to improve, the takeup remains relatively low. The business case remains hard to make because payback cannot be guaranteed – human input is still a requirement. Systems tend not to be viewed as an essential tool for an efficient business, or even as a necessary investment, but as a distress purchase forced upon us by the climate change levy.

However the tide is turning… It is doing so because aM&T works, and that is the best possible reason. As the weight of evidence through case studies grows, the installed cost of ever better aM&T packages falls, and at some point in the not too distant future these converging lines will cross. Exactly when this will happen is still impossible to predict, but energy generation (and therefore by definition usage) is currently higher on the political agenda that it has been for some time, which combined with a renewed focus on carbon emissions, must inevitably result in continued upward pressure on prices and a corresponding downward pressure on consumption.

Bearing in mind that reductions of 15% or more are often achieved almost immediately through waste elimination identified via aM&T, it may be sooner rather than later.

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