What can be farther apart than ancient Chinese wisdom and modern energy management? Since wisdom is universal, let's find out. Ancient Chinese proverb says that road of a thousand miles starts with the first step. We all heard this one. What did Chinese mean by this? A common Western interpretation of this proverb is that [...]
Which energy manager does CFO know by first name? Hands-on? Watchful? Strategic? A Hands-On energy manager walks the floor daily to personally check consumption of every machine. He is in one place at a time. A Watchful energy manager installs meters to check real-time energy performance. He monitors several machines at the same time. A [...]
Energy efficiency is becoming less and less about direct energy cost reduction and more about meeting demands of customers and governments. A recently published article Who Invests in Energy Efficiency? by American Council for an energy efficient economy sums up a range of studies about driving of energy efficiency investment in business. It comes out energy cost [...]
Even many C-levels today agree agrees that energy efficiency is important, still too often too little is done. How can this situation be changed? This 2003 article - Overcoming Barriers to Effective Energy Management in Industrial Settings - names several barriers which I list below with my comments: Lack of Organizational Commitment to energy efficiency [...]
Last week I had a pleasure of attending an intense Summer Conference set up by Association of Energy Services Professionals - AESP . One and a half days of presentations and panels were kicked off by a thought-provoking speech delivered by Patrick Schwerdtfeger about exponential nature of changes in our life, particularly massive automation [...]
A bottom up approach to energy cost reduction is a path of heroes: long, hard and massively ineffective, because it requires convincing managers on the way up. The top->bottom approach, on the other hand, is a simple and powerful approach known for decades as management: set goals, allocate resources and assign responsibilities. Now instead of [...]
More energy data is better, right? Data shows what's happening, so we should have lots of it to manager machines, right? Not necessarily. Although various meters are becoming cheaper by day, too many of them may hurt your business instead of helping to manage it. When driving, do you really need to know the exact [...]
If you are a plant manager I bet that scores of energy efficiency vendors call and email you daily. All of them want to sell their hardware and most promise extreme profitability. Will you choose a project based on salesman promise alone? If you want to quickly navigate the sea of energy efficiency offers without [...]
Would your company hire 2nd plant manager with a 12-month annual vacation contract? Simple, eh? What about - Will your company invest into energy project with zero return? When company decides to delay an energy cost reduction project ... Wait, nobody makes such decisions. Sophisticated managers of 21st century decide that "energy cost reduction project [...]
IESO has launched a new incentive program that rewards commercial real estate operators for sustained reduction of electricity consumption. Energy Performance Program pays 16c per kWh of actual reduction over 4 years as compared to 5c or 10c paid through other SaveOnEnergy programs. Savings will be determined through M&V procedure based on IPMVP Option C [...]
