It is agreed that national and sectorial level energy policies rely on EPI. Therewith, factory and process level energy planning relies on these indicators too. Indeed, the setup of energy performance indicators is one of the key elements of energy planning and energy benchmarking is a powerful tool to establish them. Therefore many authors propose various benchmarking-based indicators for assessment of energy performance on different levels of energy pyramids (country, sector, process, and equipment/appliance.).
Some of them are statistical closed tools such as EPI ENERGY STAR.
Other interesting tools are proposed for various levels and applications.
We intend to complement and supplement the literature with another side view of energy performance benchmarking in industrial and tertiary systems. Particularly, it is aimed at multi-outputs systems such as healthcare facilities and similar systems. Within this scope, we are more interested in the operating mode of the proposed indicator “IEB” rather than final results themselves. For that purpose, the IEB is used to benchmark internally the energy performance of a Moroccan hospital through 3 consecutive years. A virtual scenario is added where some potential energy efficiency measures are counted. To be brief, only 5 relevant departments are counted. But similarly, the EPI of the hospital can be calculated by counting other processes.
The EPI used in this study is an aggregated dimensionless Indicator for Energy Benchmarking developed by authors.
It is primarily dedicated for engineering applications and is especially distinguished by its ability to assess systems with different outputs.
Consequently, IEB was constructed based on Physical-thermodynamic indicators using process output units in a process-oriented decomposition according to model described.
For more usability and ease of interpretation of results, IEB was established to have the mathematical form of an electrical efficiency. This is done by ensuring following characteristics: increasing when consumption decreases, dimensionless, limited threshold value to 1.