A mere 1 month after an Energy Management Information System (EMIS) project was postponed ‘due to other priorities’ our client’s plant has stopped for 3 days. About $500,000 lost in pre-holidays food product sales. Not to count costs of avoidable urgent repairs and value of lost trust from clients. Why did plant stop? Boiler [...]
Ever wondered what should you realistically expect from a particular efficiency project? I found an answer in a well-written white paper from EATON. The paper explains what results can be expected from different efficiency measures and what claims are just myths. Most of what is stated for commercial facilities is true for an industrial [...]
Does your CFO say that energy savings are too small to bother? Here is a simple way to show how savings on energy translate into profit and production volume. Energy cost reduction increases profit. How much product should be shipped to generate the same profit? To find this out, divide energy cost reduction by [...]
When you have a situation to resolve at you plant - you can find a quick reference or advice at Plant Services . Site holds an extensive collection of short articles on various topics around plant management. Materials are free, though some advertisement comes along. While searching for somewhat scarce resources about industrial energy [...]
If you aim to get the most value from energy management, lots of materials are available to help. Through years of search and study I have come across several sources that I can honestly recommend. A practical book, written in simple language and containing lots of energy wisdom - "The Industrial Energy Harvest: Managing [...]
To be effective energy management project must start with goals to be achieved, not tools and technologies available. Managing energy has no meaning if it does not contribute to what your plant is doing. However profitable a project is, if it does not contribute to production, quality or safety, it will always be assessed [...]
Simple payback is a misleading financial ratio. Conventional wisdom says that short payback is a sign of a better project. Wrong. The goal of an investment is not to get your money back, but to make invested money make more money with minimum risk. Simple payback does not even consider risk of not getting money [...]
Every time I hear somebody say "project saved $123,456" I look if person's nose has grown a bit. Obviously such person does not understand the first thing about savings: energy savings is consumption that did not happen, nobody can measure something that did not happened. Energy savings are never exact, always an estimate. Always. [...]
When assessing energy savings, the use of math is not a substitute to engineering common sense. Math is an enhancement tool: if engineer has made in error – math will not correct it; math will make it bigger. Never mind just calculations, statistical analysis or even artificial intelligence, if result does not make engineering [...]
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 [...]
