Technology innovations have been a major source of improvement in the Energy & Resources sector with efficiency and cost control. Over the years, this growth has been enormous and evident. Significant efforts have been deployed from time to time on gaining insight into how learning on energy technologies has been acquired.
Information technology (IT) has revolutionized to such an extent that it has evolved into web-based energy information with control systems. Author Capehart in his book states that “web-based systems can provide more access, flexibility, and more interoperability; and they can provide these benefits over a wider area than conventional control systems can” (Capehart, 2004, p. 9). The book gives us an insight on how the IT wave can roll over anything ranging from buildings, campuses, manufacturing plants, schools, hospitals making them more productive and cost-effective in operation. The author further explains how IT finds its usage in energy based systems called the energy information system (EIS). EIS is broad range of web-based tools that let users measure, monitor and quantify energy usage of their facilities and help them with energy conservation opportunities. The author also tells us about the various types of EIS systems namely: Basic Energy Information System (Basic EIS), Demand Response systems (DRS), Enterprise Energy Management (EEM), Web-base Energy Management and Control Systems (Web-EMCS). In another instance the author briefs the energy-saving advantages as “These include energy monitoring and control to the energy manager and other outsourced service providers, operating benefits at individual locations, as well as the strategic benefits of company-wide energy management and aggregated procurement” (Capehart, 2004, p. 46).
The author provides awareness about some Security threats and Vulnerabilities over the security involved in EIS and Energy Control Systems (ECS). The threats can be either direct or distributed. The author mentions a purpose of a most common form of distributed attack called the denial of service (DoS) attack as “The purpose of the DoS attack is to render a network inaccessible by generating such a large amount of network traffic that the servers crash, the routers are overwhelmed, and the network’s devices cannot function properly” (Capehart, 2004, p. 228)
The book provides an insight into the energy sector and how it can benefit with IT. It enriches the concepts and principles of IT to energy managers.