Energy Monitoring (aM&T) and Saving
The cost of energy is very significant to many manufacturing operations, and its relative cost will continue to grow. For cost, environmental and legislation reasons the optimisation of energy usage is becoming critical and is driving the efficient use of energy in factories. Energy usage optimisation or aM& T (automatic Monitoring and Targeting) projects are a low risk way of saving your business operating costs, as it is possible to determine the realistic savings that could be made by applying the technology and hence the associated payback times. Moreover there are Carbon Trust schemes that can provide finance to some companies for energy saving projects with a long payback period at 0% interest. With the potential savings established and the scheme viability agreed, then the first step is to add an energy monitoring system to all the target energy consumers, and it is important here to do this in a way that provides easy to understand information together with consumer accountability. If you collect data simply in gross form, (e.g. all the steam being used by the factory), then no one person feels that he or she can influence the rate of consumption and so no improvements are made. The consumption figures should to be broken down to Energy Account Centres with nominated responsibilities. With this system in place then the next step is to apply automatic energy saving techniques – normally in the form of software and hardware technology that controls the rate of use depending on production, day, time of day and rate factors. To discuss a potential application, for help in determining your possible energy savings or for discussing the zero interest finance schemes please email or 'phone our sales team using the Contact Us page and we will arrange for a specialist to contact you.