Energy saving: interventions in industry to reduce costs

What are the factors and possible solutions that can improve energy efficiency in industry? Here is an insight into the methods that a company can adopt to record a reduction in energy costs.

Strategies for industrial energy saving

For some years now, manufacturing companies have integrated the goal of reducing energy resources into their corporate mission.

The interventions are aimed at achieving significant improvements in terms of economic and consumption monitoring.

Targeted and immediate activities are now required on all fronts, both industrial and domestic.

We are talking about implementing measures aimed at achieving energy savings and thus reducing energy consumption linked to production.

Much has been said about how a consumer can reduce costs, but little about the great potential in industry.

The Energy Efficiency Manual in the Directory describes what businesses can do to improve energy efficiency. 

Produced by ABB and members of the Energy Efficiency Movement, the report contains concrete best practices to achieve a significant impact on costs and emissions.

Best practices to achieve a significant impact

Industry turns out to be the largest "consumer" of energy sources, largely involving steel, chemical and petrochemical industries.

Then summarize the operational measures that meet the criteria of the processing industry. They are also based on mature, secure and available, concrete and easy to implement technologies.

• Audit of operational activities
  
  These energy efficiency measures highlight potential areas for improvement that can be achieved through an action plan that monitors progress.
  
  
• Correct sizing of industrial plants and processes

Analysis of industrial assets often reveals that machinery is oversized in relation to its function. This can lead to an inefficient load of devices and excessive energy waste.

• Connectivity of equipment

Thanks to the modern infrastructure of the iot, connecting the plants to the smart monitoring systems the resources are managed more efficiently.

• Installations of high efficiency motors

Replacing obsolete systems or systems that exploit older technologies becomes a priority in a continuous production line.
Especially where the components have a higher efficiency coefficient.

• Use of variable speed drives

The installation of this type of drive improves the efficiency of a system with an electric motor up to 30%.

• Electrification of company vehicles 

Road transport leaves plenty of room for electrification, so replacing vehicles with diesel or petrol engines eliminates significant amounts of CO2 emissions.

• Use of efficient and well maintained heat exchangers

Periodic maintenance activities are not foreseen for this type of machinery, although performance levels are not optimal and cause minimal CO2 emissions. Regular overhauls optimize energy efficiency and reuse the heat spent in other processes.

• Replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps

The benefits of the use of heat pumps can be verified in the low-medium temperature heat revenue from electricity.
A technology that will soon be implemented and will allow homes to benefit from heating obtained from electricity and not gas.

• Implementation of building management systems (BMS)

The monitoring of electrical and mechanical equipment can take place through modern technologies, going to adjust the parameters without manual intervention.

• Data transfer to the cloud

Data transfer to the cloud is used to gather information and data about industrial machinery and understand how to optimize system operations. Considering that more and more storage and data processing capacities will be required in the future, and consequently energy, the technology sector is already working on proposing solutions on energy efficiency, such as cloud computing.

However, it is important to consider the following operational applications as best practices and not absolute behaviors.

In addition to considering the impact and cost of implementation, it is necessary to verify the potential risks and critical success factors before achieving the imagined energy savings results.