We’re less than 24 hours away from Energy Management Bootcamp – if you haven’t registered for the webinar, do it now! Space is limited and at last check we were just about at maximum participants.

To get your head thinking in the right direction for tomorrow’s call we asked Dr. Kent a few preliminary questions. Have more questions you hope to get answered? We’ll be taking questions for Dr. Kent throughout the webinar and we’ll relay any questions posted here.

1. How should a company analyze their utility bill to determine a need for an energy conservation project?

Companies need to first of all understand their energy bill and the components that make up the bill. The actual cost of power (the kWh) is often only around 70% of the bill. The other charges make up 30% of the bill and need to be examined. This is often the easiest part and some really big savings can be made here if you understand how the bill is constructed.

Don’t be afraid to ask the power company for help here. You are paying them a lot of money every month. Get their people out to explain how the bill is made up and what you are paying for.

Incidentally, surveys show that about 5% of power bills contain actual errors. This makes it important to check the bill every month and to compare the values to those on your meters.

2. What suggestions do you have for employees to help them engage others, especially upper level management, on moving forward with an energy management program?

Employees need to realize that management is largely motivated by $$$. Some progressive companies will also be motivated by a desire to reduce their environmental impact but these are in the minority. This means that employees need to emphasize the double benefit of energy management. It can save the company money and also reduce the environmental impact. There is no conflict here – it is a classic win-win situation.

Up to 30% of the energy spend in most companies is ‘discretionary’, this means that the company spends the money because they ‘choose’ to spend it by either inefficient practices or by a lack of knowledge. Employees should highlight the fact that an Energy Management program can both reduce energy costs by 30% but also reduce the environmental impact by the same amount.

Focus on the $$$ savings and the environmental benefits will follow automatically.

3. In your presentation you remind companies that although changing the facility’s lighting can make a difference, there are other energy efficiency projects out there that have the potential of bringing more savings to a company. What are some different energy conservation projects available to the manufacturing industry?

For plastics processing companies the energy use from lighting will be in the region of 5% of the total energy costs. Companies need to map their energy use and to find out where they are using the most energy and where projects will be most effective. For plastics processing, the main use will almost always be in the plastics processing equipment but this may not yield the best (most cost effective projects). The projects chosen will depend on where the energy use is and what the best opportunities are. In some cases this is in the services (compressed air, cooling water) and in other cases it is in the process (plastics processing machines. Every site is different.

Incidentally, I always recommend that companies do some work on lighting, it may not be the best place for real savings but it is essential to send a message to the employees. It is all very well carrying out projects in the ‘hidden’ areas  but employees like to see lighting projects for the simple reason that they can see them. A lighting project sends a message that the company is doing something.

4. What are a building’s major heating and cooling losses?

Buildings are complex beasts and most of the heat losses (or gains) will be fixed when the building was first constructed. I always look for building sealing and insulation. It is no use heating or cooling a building if all the doors are left open and if the building itself is poorly insulated. Improving the sealing and insulation are major projects that will have long paybacks but simple measures can reduce costs quickly.

As an example, many sites will be heated in the winter but the access doors to loading bays will be left open and the heating will be on. This only heats the outside and is a losing battle. When companies try to motivate their people they find it hard to do because people simply turn up the heating to compensate for the open doors. Link the heating to the doors with a simple tamper-proof micro-switch so that when the doors are open then the heating will not work! Behavior modification is rapid.

5. How can a company determine which area/machine/appliances consumes the most energy? Are there any free resources that would help?

Energy mapping is a simple and essential first step. We will cover energy mapping in the Webinar.

4. What are the first steps for someone to take when they begin this process?

The essential first steps are to get the information. Many sites are awash with data but they mistake this for information. They are not the same thing. Data doesn’t tell you what to do next, information does.

The first steps are:

• Get the data.
• Convert this to real information.
• Act on the information.

5. What energy solutions are best for certain machines/facilities?

There are no ‘boiler-plate’ answers to this. If there were then I would be out of a job. The reality is that every site has different issues and whilst there are some tried and tested solutions for a range of issues it is impossible to tell which issues are important to a site without knowing the site and without having the information.

6. How can a facility tell if their energy management solution is beneficial? How should they analyze their bill before and after?

Assessing the effectiveness of action is always difficult but the Performance Characteristic Line method (described in the Webinar) provides the most effective method. Assessing a site’s performance using a simple measure such as kWh/kg is ineffective and can lead to the wrong answers. This is because this is affected by production volume and simply increasing the volume will decrease the kWh/kg. This will be discussed more fully in the Webinar.