Cloud-Based platform for enhancing energy consumption awareness and substantiating the adoption of energy efficiency measures within SMEs

Nowadays, in order to be competitive in the context of dynamic market changes, companies concern themselves with the adoption of novel business models for the optimization of resource consumption. The decision to adopt energy efficiency measures within a company is often hard to substantiate, given the multitude of factors that influence the feasibility of the project, such as regional laws and regulations, ambient weather conditions, energy pricing, company's activity profile, building structure and characteristics, consumption infrastructure and availability of funding sources. The combination of these factors is unique for each company, thus the adoption of any energy efficiency measures, especially when the investment costs are high, should be rigorously evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to present the conceptual model of a Cloud-based energy management platform that aims to help SMEs monitor energy consumption and associated costs in real time, analyze consumption patterns, assess the economic efficiency of EPCbased projects, benefit from recommendations, generate energy reports in compliance with international standards and find suitable business partners in the field of energy.