Factories with a high energy demand have a clear need to track energy spend closely. A good understanding of energy use, resolving issues quickly avoids loss and additional spend.
Our expert view
Tom Purkhardt, Senior Consultant at Verco provides data driven analysis, energy and carbon reduction assessments, and project delivery for our manufacturing clients. In this article he describes what good energy management looks like and the actions you can take to implement this at your site.
Good energy practice means daily action.
Good energy management practice means daily reporting on incomer energy performance and reviewing energy measures taken the previous day. Daily review of anomalies ensures actions can be introduced quickly to resolve issues. We find that this continuous improvement approach prevents issues from building up, becoming unmanageable and of course avoids loss. For example, our reporting system alerted us that a manufacturing site gas consumption significantly rose in a day. By interrogating the metered data on their daily report, we found that their boiler was stuck in bypass and was left on when not required. This could be quickly corrected and loss avoided as a result.
A good M&T platform should automate energy reporting for you.
Carbon Desktop tracks daily KPI reporting whilst providing a scheduled report drumbeat, so reporting is automated and accessible. It’s fully customisable, you can tailor the insights to your business objectives by tracking the performance against the targets that you set.
The contract energy management service from Verco pays for itself in savings. This is due to building organisational expertise using the right training and resources.
Those who are responsible for energy optimisation in-house should have the right training and resources to perform their role. The people with key roles need to know how to interpret the data and prioritise actions based on facts. An internal review of training needs is a useful first step.
A tailored approach
The Verco team have broad expertise and our experience with clients means that we quickly identify priority actions. The quick wins are brought to the forefront of peoples’ minds so they can focus on what needs to be resolved first. Sites that use the Contract Energy Manager Service see an improvement in energy saving and loss avoidance.
We find that organisations benefit from this tailored service because the energy management role is often a sub-element of someone’s broader responsibility; e.g. Health and Safety or Engineering. Because of the multiple demands on their role, these individuals really benefit from concise data and reporting and tailored energy advice about the areas that really matter.
Find out more about the contract energy manager service.
What to consider once you have the basics covered
A good next step is to look at introducing further data feeds to improve the data granularity of your system. Our experience shows that you would benefit by introducing energy targets and metering for consumption of specific areas. Indeed, our clients have seen the impact of energy actions being amplified through more granular data analysis and opportunity identification. They can also track and measure the savings they achieve on a daily and weekly basis.
Please get in touch for further information, we will be happy to help.
