EMIS

Energy Management Information System – EMIS (or ISEM in Serbian) is a computer program or an internet application serving as a basic tool supporting the energy management system in public and commercial buildings. EMIS has been donated to the Republic of Serbia by the UNDP – United Nations Development Programme within the Project “Introducing energy management system in public buildings in Serbia”, implemented jointly by the Ministry of Mining and energy of the Republic of Serbia and the UNDP. In order to establish the EMIS, the Ministry of Mining and Energy provided the hardware and the system software and in cooperation with the UNDP carried out training courses for system administrators and the first group of end users. After one year testing in a number of pilot municipalities (Paraćin, Ćuprija, Kruševac, Lajkovac, Varvarin, Trstenik, Brus, Aleksandrovac) the EMIS was tailored for use in Serbia and prescribed by the Ministry of Mining and Energy as one of the mandatory tools for energy management in municipalities. This does not put an end to the development of EMIS. In June 2015, the GEF – Global Environmental Fund approved funds to the republic of Serbia for the project “Removing barriers to promote and support the energy management system in municipalities in Serbia” which will be implemented jointly by the Ministry of Mining and Energy and the UNDP in the period from 2015 to 2020. It is planned that the project will include the upgrading of the EMIS, to include the development of new modules for utility services and development of new and enhancement of existing functionalities within the module for public buildings. The future development of EMIS shall be carried out in a manner which is to ensure a high level of compatibility with other software tools used by the Ministry of Mining and Energy.

EMIS is intended primarily for monitoring and analyzing data on consumption and costs of energy and water in public buildings under the responsibility of local self-governments, the province, and the national level. Thus, EMIS shall be used to establish a national data base on actual consumption of energy, energy raw materials and water in public buildings. Nevertheless, irrespective of its primary purpose, its concept design is flexible which enables it to be used with equal success also for buildings which are the responsibility of other institutions and organizations, indirect budget beneficiaries, commercial buildings and public enterprises. The EMIS is designed using the relations data base platform (Oracle) and Web architecture, meaning that it can be accessed from any computer with an online connection using Internet browsers available in the market, such as: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari, etc.

Structure of the EMIS

The key functionalities of the EMIS are divided into data base functionalities and data analyses functionalities.

Data base functionalities refer to the entry and archiving of all entered data in the basic data base, sorting, browsing and simple access to all necessary information on entered buildings, while the data analysis functionalities refer to different analyses of entered data, comparisons and analyses of actual energy and water consumption in different time intervals, comparisons of different buildings, monitoring and verification of savings in buildings with the possibility to print results and automatically generate reports, etc.

The EMIS enables:

Creating data bases (registers) for buildings (parts of buildings, stand-alone buildings, stand-alone buildings within complexes, or building complexes) whose consumption of energy, energy raw materials, and water is being monitored;
Recording and updating sets of relevant data necessary to define the status of individual buildings in the data base (registers), for example:
- General data (name, address, purpose, floor area, year of construction, etc.);
- Structural data (how the building was constructed and what is its current general state);
- Energy data (types of energy and energy raw materials, key consumers of energy and water within the building and the amount of such consumption in physical and monetary terms).
Simple access to information regarding the number, type and use of buildings, their geographical locations, general energy and structural data regarding buildings;
Continued collection of data and supervision of consumption of all types of energy (ex. electricity, natural gas, extra light, light and medium fuel oil, crude, firewood, coal, heat, steam, sanitary hot water (SHW), etc.) and water. Entry of data on consumption of energy, energy raw materials and water is one by one of the following methods:
- Manually by entry of data by end users into predefined templates by means of the Web application. Data entry intervals usually correlate to the invoicing intervals for energy, energy raw materials and water consumption, and templates are defined so as to be fully corresponding to invoices by specific suppliers. Also, more frequent data entry is also possible, based on direct reading of relevant meters and counters.
- Automatically, by suppliers of energy, energy raw materials and water, who provide online invoices electronically in a format where individual items are entered under a certain procedure to the data base;
- Automatically – by taking over of data from meters which have the distant reading features (water meters, gas meters, calorimeters, electricity counters, etc.).

Automatic reading of data from meters and counters

Simple access to information on total energy and water consumption along with specification of systems in which the energy and water is used and which energy raw materials are used;
Overview and graphical presentation of energy and water consumption in all periods in which consumption data is entered;
Processing and analysis of collected data and their presentation through the system in pre-defined formats of energy and financial reports, graphs and analyses;
Control of costs and setting of objectives to reduce costs of energy, energy raw materials and water;
Advanced search of the data base by means of inbuilt filters and sorting by types and purposes of buildings, end users of buildings and budget lines from which costs are funded;
Generation of indicators of energy efficiency of buildings;
Communication among system users with automatic system of notifications and alerts to users;
Statistical control of data entry and setting alerts for exceeding the set thresholds of consumption;
Identification of energy efficiency projects;
Preparation of energy efficiency projects;
Recording energy efficiency measures undertaken in public buildings;
Simple and easy monitoring of results of implementing projects aimed at increasing energy efficiency;
Awareness raising and promoting energy efficiency.

2.The hierarchy of EMIS users has a number of levels of users who have different system functionalities available. This hierarchy consists of:

System administrator – the highest hierarchy level of users;
The Ministry of Mining and Energy;
Local decision-makers (for example majors, directors of PUC, etc.);
Energy managers (of municipalities/buildings/enterprises);
Users at building level – appointed person in buildings for which data is entered;
Data supplier – the local supplier of energy, energy raw materials and water, who can automatically (online) send data to EMIS.

Data entry can be performed by system administrator, energy managers, users and data suppliers but they have different authorizations. The Ministry of Mining and Energy and the local decision-makers do not have the possibility to enter data but only to some degree they can have access to data in the system. Thus, for instance, the Ministry can have full access to all data contained in the EMIS (all buildings, in all municipalities in Serbia), while local decision-makers can have access to data on buildings within their competences, for instance the mayors can have access to data on all buildings within the competences of the municipality.

Organization of EMIS data collection and entry

All EMIS users must be qualified to work with computers, and be skilled in certain procedures to use MS Windows and MS Office programs, and to browse webpages. System administrators must have more advanced knowledge in working with computers.

All categories of EMIS users who can enter data to EMIS require training. Municipal energy managers who are obliged members of the energy management system as defined by the Law on Efficient Use of Energy are obliged to undergo training and pass examinations for energy managers according to the Law and the Rulebook on the methods and contents or energy managers’ training, cost of training and other conditions, as well as taking of examinations for energy managers (“The Official Gazette of RS”, Nr. 12/2015). After completing training, the system administrator assigns to energy managers their user names, passwords for log-in and access to all municipal buildings. EMIS users at the level of buildings must complete training, which is less advanced and shorter in duration, since their competences with respect to data entry are lower. Training for users at the level of building sis performed by the UNDP, and later such training shall be provided by municipal energy managers. After completed training, the users are assigned their user names, and passwords for access to their building or group of buildings. For each category of users, detailed instructions have been prepared for the use of EMIS which can be downloaded from the EMIS access website: http://isem.undp.org.rs/.

The first training courses for energy managers according to the Law and the Rulebook are expected to begin in June 2016. In the interim period all training for use of EMIS, defining of buildings, account and reports is performed by system administrators of the UNDP.