Spiralling energy bills can be stemmed to cut manufacturers’
costs and carbon footprints, says Rod Ellsworth, vice
president for Global Asset Sustainability at Infor

Legislative measures instilled by the
Emissions Trading System and CRC
Energy Efficiency Scheme are enforcing
a reduction in energy consumption for the
largest users across Europe, with the UKfocused
CRC tasked with cutting carbon
emissions by 1.2 million tonnes/year by 2020.

For organisations too small to be
impacted by these initiatives, reducing
energy consumption is driven primarily by the
need to stem spiralling energy bills. The costs
of energy and fuel have soared by 40% in the
last five years and are expected to increase by
a further 40% in the next five years.

Companies can do little about the long
term market price of fuel and, as a result,
often view their energy bills as a fixed cost
over which they have little control. In reality
this is not the case. Energy accounts for a
high percentage of an organisation’s
Operations and Maintenance budget, and
much of it is wasted.

While some organisations are starting to
take measures to cut energy consumption,
they are often limited in what they can
achieve. Typically, companies tend to start by
looking at a utility bill and set objectives to
reduce the total figure at the bottom. Some
might even combine this figure with supply
chain costs, to get a more comprehensive
figure.While this might sound logical, this
figure represents only a crude measure from
which to instigate the process.

Any objective to reduce energy wastage
cannot be achieved by just measuring the
energy use of a commodity, but must focus
on how that commodity is consuming
energy. This ‘energy bill down’ approach does
not include detailed consumption patterns of
individual plant assets which can identify when
and where most waste occurs.Without this
detail, there is no way of knowing how much
energy is being wasted, and therefore what
can be eliminated without impacting the
running of day-to-day operations. To reduce
energy bills, the following questions must be
answered:
How committed are we?
Where is most of our energy consumed?
How much should we be consuming?
How much wastage is involved?
With the exception of the question on
commitment, most organisations are
unlikely to be able to answer the questions
accurately. The old adage that ‘you can’t
manage that which you can’t measure’ is
true; if a company does not know which
assets are inefficient, it is impossible to act to
improve the consumption of energy.

Having committed to the concept, it is
technology which presents the real opportunity
to deliver savings, as the actions needed cannot
be undertaken manually. Unfortunately no
spreadsheet, no matter how sophisticated, is
capable of capturing and processing the
millions of pieces of data necessary to
effectively monitor, measure and analyse the
energy consumption and performance of the
range of machinery, air conditioning and
transportation in a manufacturing plant.

Organisations tend to assume that once
an asset is installed the biggest cost has been
expended. However, ongoing running costs
far outweigh initial outlay.Moreover, there is
a belief that plant will continue to operate as
efficiently as it did on day 1.Machinery
which uses compressed air represents one of
the largest culprits of waste as the pressure
involved in the operation of the machine
means leaks are more likely. The problems
get worse as the equipment ages, but the
extent to which consumption deteriorates is
impossible to track in most cases.

Advanced asset management systems
harness data from a number of sources to
assess how efficiently a machine is operating
on a continuous 24/7 basis. They show the
actual energy consumed in the course of
production, and the units, parts or processes
which are consuming disproportionately
more energy than they should. Such systems
provide warnings when consumption gets too
high and flag when maintenance is needed.

Sub-meters measure energy consumption
at the asset level in order to feed asset
management software. Many pieces of
equipment are now being fitted with built in
smart-metering at the point of manufacture.

Microprocessor chips fitted onto assets can
provide information on consumption levels,
uploading information to asset management
software directly.

The level of information provided by asset
management systems can facilitate the action
required to remove inefficient processes, parts
and machines which are disproportionately
energy-hungry, and the lifecycle of an asset
can often be extended through evaluation of
its running costs against efficiency levels.

Asset management software, in
conjunction with sub or smart metering, can
reduce energy consumption by an average of
30%, which for a typical plant running a
large number of machines, air conditioning
units and transport involved in supply chain
operations, equates to big figure savings. In
an economy which for many remains tough,
cost savings associated with substantial
reductions in energy consumption and
waste, are increasingly compelling in the
quest to be both green and lean.