A conventional wisdom suggests that only action creates results. I tend to agree, except that is must be a correct action. How do you what energy project is the right one? How to choose between projects when each vendor claims attractive savings? I do not have a crystal ball either, but I [...]
My esteemed UK colleague Vilnis Vesma has written a series of smart articles that explains the often hidden value of measuring, monitoring and targeting of energy consumption. For the fun of it he arranged the series in alphabetic order. These short posts are written in plain English and contain tons of common sense based [...]
Smart meters can do much more than provide a stream of measurements. But here is a catch: operators must know how they work. Here is a story to illustrate. Client installed a smart gas meter for a commercial kitchen. One year later gas supply is blocked. Meter blocked gas supply, it must be at [...]
Our South African colleague Craig van Wyk from VWG Consulting expressed a consideration very much worth republishing: if savings per unit are achieved and sustained in high-volume manufacturing, they keep mounting every hour of every day. Here is Craig's message: During my years in management in the high-volume manufacturing environment, prior to becoming a [...]
Use of average electricity cost can be misleading when assessing financial impact of energy efficiency measures. What counts is the cost of the last kWh used that is comprised off Global Adjustment (Ontario), demand charges (kW) and energy cost. It matters if avoided consumption contributed to consumption during monthly peak demand or not. Faults of [...]
A common way to determine energy intensity in manufacturing is to divide energy cost by production volume, resulting in kWh per car or m3 per pound of bread. This simplistic approach may hit energy manager where it hurts the most - at evaluation of completed projects. A good well-implemented project may show dismal savings [...]
1. In metering we trust :) Data is only reliable if it has been collected through routine automatic metering, which has been validated. All claims like 'we always keep this operational schedule', 'compressor/boiler/light is off on weekend' or 'current never exceeds X Amp', all of them have exactly zero value to energy [...]
It occurred to me that meters relate to energy monitoring in the same way as screws relate to birdhouses. How is that? Some manufacturing plants start energy management from installation of meters. Too often the process ends with meters too. However costly, this result is predictable. I will explain why on an example of [...]
Energy audit takes time and costs money, is it worth the effort? How do I know if it will uncover enough saving opportunities? To quickly estimate how much money can be saved on utilities, we have devised an express tool - Energy Management Score assessment™. EMS is based on a premise that the way [...]
Sam Hoff, president of Patti Engineering. suggests to start collecting data only after one has identified the problem. See IIoT project success: First identify the problem, then begin collecting data. I think he meant to say "problem area", because if you know what the problem is - you do not need more data, you need [...]
