In the view of growing electricity prices and time-sensitive tariffs numerous vendors around offer on-site electricity generation and storage. Should your company do it? Are you in business of electricity generation? Prior to going into technical and financial details of different solutions, I suggest you ask yourself a more basic, strategic question: if you are [...]
How to produce more, use less energy and be rewarded for upgrades? It can be done. Our client, an injection moulding plant working for automotive sector, wanted to upgrade to bigger, more powerful machines. These machines use more energy. However, they produce so much more product, that energy use per pound is effectively lower. Much [...]
We continue industrial refrigeration optimization project aimed at energy consumption reduction without compromise of refrigeration capacity. At first stage we study the system. Study through direct observation and through analysis of directly measured energy consumption data on all parts of the refrigeration system - from compressors to condenser fans and pumps. This data in combination [...]
A friendly maintenance manager told me recently: “We will first do all we can with our big energy users and then proceed to an energy audit”. 'Big ticket items first' approach to energy management may hurt business and can hurt maintenance manager personally. This hurt can be avoided. If started right, big and impactful energy [...]
Simple payback period is routinely used as an ultimate ratio when it comes to selecting between energy projects. This practice may cost your company money in missed opportunities. Simple payback period (SPP) is the simplest way to assess profitability of an investment project. Simply divide first year cost by first year savings and you get [...]
Today I had the most pleasant meeting at owners office of our manufacturing client. I experienced deep satisfaction when plant manager bragged about results of projects to the owner - lighting, grants, utility audit, compressed air system audit, changes in water supply, upcoming refrigeration optimisation and monitoring. And a grey-haired owner said: "I am happy with [...]
What’s the best way to fight global adjustment cost? Omitting numerous details, three options are available: behind the meter generation, batteries and curtailing. Below is a quick comparison of pros, cons and risks of these solutions. Natural gas generators – switch to own source of power during peak hours Vendor promise Install a behind the meter [...]
At a recent energy conference and tradeshow, #ESX2108, among other interesting presentations, one caught my attention - a serious approach offered by Peak Power Inc to reducing Global Adjustment charges by switching demand during peak hours to huge batteries. They consider peak chasing a mathematical game, and rightly so. Peak Power uses big data and machine learning to [...]
We have recently completed a comprehensive utility audit at a mid-size B2B food processing plant in the GTA and client has turned our recommendations into ‘projects to be completed this year’. A $50mln industrial food plant has been recently acquired and new owners decided to get it into shape. This plant buys electricity, natural gas, [...]
Inadequate compressed air distribution network caused quality issues at plastic moulding operation. Through a recently completed energy audit at a plastic moulding plant we have established that a state-of-the-art variable speed compressor fed a dead-end distribution network, which was too narrow for the load. Compressed air distribution network can block air from reaching the machines. [...]
