Energy Monitoring and Targeting
Energy Monitoring and Targeting(EM&T) is essential for industries and commercial buildings. It is globally proven that energy monitoring alone leads to a significant amount of savings. Energy information is the first building block for energy management and provides insights to target the wastage. The success of any energy management strategy relies on how accurately and efficiently energy data is captured. It is also very important to understand that EM&T is a continuous process and has to be done iteratively to reap the benefits of energy efficiency.
Given below are 7 major steps in EM&T and how we can enable an industry to implement them.
1. Recording
Data is collected from all devices(Energy Meter, VFD, etc.) in a process at regular intervals. The data frequency varies on the resolution of the desired report. This is the first and most important step in EM&T. However, this is a very cumbersome task and often dedicated resources are assigned to achieve this. Manually doing this may get out of hand easily in a medium sized factory or even when the recorded variable is a fluctuating one ( e.g. Current).
To avoid this large overhead, common practice is to use the OEM’s software to collect data. Factories having devices from different OEMs buy license for multiple softwares. In this case data has to be collected from all the softwares and then recorded. On top of that buying multiple of these softwares can become a cost intensive task.
Enture takes care of all these problems. It is capable of connecting across OEM devices( Energy Meters, VFDs, etc. ). The Collection, processing and storage of data is completely handled by it. All of the devices can be integrated and viewed from one dashboard making it simple and easy.
The recorded data is structured to build time based trends and identify parameter relationships. This is required to get a clear picture of the current process and understanding how the variables in a process is dependent on one another. Analyzing the recorded data can become daunting once the amount of data increases. It often takes up lot of efforts to structure and page through the enormous amount of data.
Enture helps you achieve all these as it automatically structures the data and runs analytics on it.
Enture enables easy understanding of the relationship amongst the parameters by giving relationship trend graph, also it helps to understand the energy requirement with Time of Day, specific energy consumption, etc.
The recorded and analyzed results are compared to a baseline to find variance. The baseline is often derived by identifying the best fit line on the production consumption graphs. The ideal state or the base line are both defined by Energy consumption data as well as Independent variable data (Weather, facility occupancy, etc.). Variance can also be identified by comparing consumption on processes/machines with similar workloads or with historical data. This is a necessary step to identify any losses as well as scope of improvement.
Enture eases the entire process by enabling you to plot consumption graphs, compare the energy usage with historical data and providing structured data for usage.
The causes of variance are then identified by energy efficiency specialists in collaboration with building managers. With the causes identified along with the usage/consumption data, realistic targets can be set to reduce energy usage and cut down wastages. A good place to start setting targets is the “best fit line” (Mentioned in step 3). Predictive maintenance can be done identifying variance with historical data and parameters such as runtime.
Targeting consists of how much consumption can be reduced and the timeframe to achieve the same. The Targets are driven by the management’s goal of energy saving. For example, some companies target to bring their average performance to their historical best.
Enture provides all the tools at your disposal to help in setting the targets and adhering to them.
Energy monitoring and targeting is a continuous process and requires monitoring at all times to measure the consumption and check the process behavior is aligned with the said targets. This is a crucial step to ensure everything is going according to plan.
With Enture you can monitor every parameter of every device in a factory in real time, understand the process behavior with time based trends.
The monitored data is analyzed to find any variances from set targets. Reporting of the findings and the usage trends are primal for the company management to understand the degree of success or failure of the targets.
Enture makes this much easier as you can generate custom trends and reports on any targeted process/device. It also auto generates of reports and sends them over email.
In case of variance is encountered in the reports, corrective action is taken to rectify it. Any process anomaly is rectified by controlling/adjusting the variables in a process. Variances might occur due to various environmental reasons. Most often rectification happens by adjusting machine related parameters. The parameters are adjusted to align the process behavior with the targets.
Enture helps you to remotely update any parameter on your devices (DFD, VRS, etc.).
Benefits:
• Energy cost savings, typically 5 to 15% as a direct consequence of the EM&T program, along with reductions in emissions of CO2 and other pollutants.
• Better Co-ordination and implementation of energy management policy, through targeting of initiatives that achieve the maximum benefit and sustaining savings over the long term.
• Preventative maintenance by increasing the availability of energy data.
• With an understanding of energy usage data, process workloads can be distributed for better performance.
• Improved budgeting by providing a basis for a more accurate projection of future energy costs.