What is the Utility Monitoring System?

The Utility Monitoring System (UMS) is a utility management tool. It is a Web-based computer system that collects detailed consumption information for selected utilities serving your facility. Many facilities also use the UMS to sub-meter other important hotel loads such as chillers, laundry, or restaurants.

Automated Daily Reporting

Many UMS reporting functions are automated. A key output of the system is the automated daily utility report that can be viewed locally online, or sent by automated e-mail delivery. The daily UMS Report provides engineering staff with a graphical and tabular summary of both yesterday’s and the current month-to-date utility consumption and cost, broken down by utility type. The daily UMS Report can be customized to provide comparisons to appropriate benchmarks such as hotel consumption averages, nominated quantities or month-end consumption and cost forecasts.

Automated Monthly Reporting

The automated monthly UMS Energy Accounting Reports provide more detail and the data are fed directly into a corporate Energy Reporting System. The monthly UMS Accounting Reports also provide energy consumption and cost information on sub-metered loads such as chillers or cooling towers and cost centers such as restaurants and laundries. Monthly tenant billing reports can also be generated.

Daily Data Verification. As an additional automated feature, each business day all data from the UMS are scanned and automatically verified. Data anomalies are identified and reported back to the facility. These anomalies frequently represent crucial information.

• Sometimes these data anomalies are the result of malfunctioning equipment and could be used to identify problems that otherwise might be overlooked.
• At other times the anomalies might reflect changed consumption patterns due to operating or weather changes that are easily corrected once they are discovered.
• Some anomalies relate directly to the UMS and reflect sensor problems or equipment maintenance issues.

Alarms

In addition to these daily data exception reports, the UMS can also provide e-mail or audible alarms when consumption thresholds are reached or certain conditions are met, such as sending an alarm signal when a second chiller is operating. Alarms can also result in the generation of digital output signals.