You paid it but nobody knows where it was consumed
“The Sankey diagram shows the energy flows in your organisation”
"Eurostat (ec.europa.eu)”
Even in large companies I noted a complete lack of knowledge regarding the flow of energy after it comes in through the main energy meter. That means, there is in the best case a knowledge about the monthly consumption. What is completely in the dark, is what happens afterwards. This means: how much energy goes where, when and why.
I saw this in many (Swiss) companies with up to 2000 employees and energy bills of up to 2 million Franks per year. The Swiss Frank has mostly the equal value as the USD.
Knowing these 3 dimensions of the consumed and paid energy, the way is open for Energy Efficiency. These 3 W-questions most often lead to very cheap savings. In other words, low hanging fruit. Let’s take an example:
-1. Energy saving by disactivation. The compressor might be unnecessary during times that production is halted or people are away. Even if this may be obvious, people often forget to switch them off. That is easy to fix.
-2. Energy saving by maintenance. The compressor might switch on every 2 hours during periods that nothing and nobody needs compressed air. From these cycles it is easy to calculate how much air is leaking away. This needs some searching for the leaks but it is not expensive to find & fix that.
-3. Let’s not forget the improvement of the plant. Fixing leaks and switching off during unproductive hours may lead to a better pressure profile and less running hours and thus maintenance of the compressor and related plants. This is an additional benefit. In some cases, added benefits can be even larger than the utility bill savings.
How can you save energy without more detail on the energy flows? How can you control costs? Why should energy not have an accountant’s ledger?
There is no energy saving without energy transparancy.