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 [...]
Reduction of air exhaust from refrigerated room reduced cooling load and eliminated need for refrigeration plant upgrade
Situation Doing nothing is an investment decision too. Investment with a guaranteed return of nothing. Here is a common conversation at a manufacturing plant: Me: … Implementation will cost you $5K and save $15K within 12 months. Maintenance manager: So we save $10K? Not much for our plant. Besides, I do not make investment [...]
A common objection to doing an energy audit is that 'Everything is fine'. This is rarely the case. Here are two examples when audit uncovered saving opportunities that clients did not know existed because they believed everything was in perfect state already. Efficient equipment does not equate to efficient operation. Sanitation staff turned [...]
A common belief is that if plant is equipped with efficient machines it runs efficiently. Unfortunately, this is not always true. Efficiency of components does not equate to efficiency of the whole plant. Common reason for utility waste by efficient machines: Misuse: compressed air used instead of blowers or for cooling, oversized motors, excessive [...]
We often hear: "Our plant runs at top energy efficiency because we use these procedures and settings and our efficient equipment is fully operational." Just how often is this true? With all due respect to maintenance and operational staff, recommendations of a proper energy audit are based on direct observation of operations and lots [...]
A lot of energy costs can be saved at manufacturing plant without CAPEX.
Complex energy audit does not look at energy alone. It considers how energy use affects core business - production, quality, scrap, employee productivity.
We all agree that Energy Management is important, even C-levels agree. Still too often it's not done. Why is that? This 2003 article - Overcoming Barriers to Effective Energy Management in Industrial Settings - names several barriers which I list below with my comments : Lack of Organizational Commitment If senior management is not committed to [...]
In this post we shall continue describing how 3M has achieved outstanding energy cost reduction results. These publication has resulted from interview with Andrew Hejnar, Energy Manager of 3M Canada. This post follows previous publications: Part 1: How does 3M take big energy decisions Part 2: Energy standards increase savings Part 3: 3 pillars of [...]
