Simple energy metrics can be useless or worse Our client, an industrial bakery, monitored natural gas burned in the oven in m3 per kg of shipped bread. A fair metric, right? Just read the meter, take production report, divide consumption by production - done. They have got nowhere with this metric when it came to [...]
If company does not want to look at energy use, it's a good moment to ask "Why is that?" What issues management chooses not to be aware of? This post was inspired by the shortest blog post I have read to date. It came from Seth Godin: The problem you can't talk about ... is now [...]
How valuable would it be for your business to cut the energy use of an industrial refrigeration plant by 30%, while still supporting the same load? To do so with a short payback? What if incentives halved the payback? This is what we are doing. GreenQ Partners has completed a pilot project at a refrigeration [...]
An old adage goes that an engineer keeps working even standing in line to pay for beer. This certainly came true during my last vacation at a small resort by a warm sea. Several energy-related observations I made there illustrate what is commonly happening in industrial setting back home and provide actionable lessons. Following these [...]
A new online program has been launched by University of Denver Colorado. It's been reported that over 33,000 students from around the world have enrolled. The course is offered free of charge through Coursera. The Fundamentals of Global Energy Business course provides students with an introduction to the business of primary energy production. The class examines the [...]
Steam is one of the most expensive forms of energy at most manufacturing plants. Powerful boilers produce lots and lots of it. Surely a couple of small leaks cost next to nothing, right? Here is a simple way to assess what damage a leak makes to the bottom line. Idea of this post came from [...]
Renewable sources of electricity may be not consistent, but they are highly predictable. Smartly combining them through a smart grid with efficiency measures makes it possible to compensate intermittence effectively. On the other hand, traditional sources of electricity, like coal and nuclear, have 10-12% downtime, which may happen unpredictably. Just to put things into perspective: [...]
Lighting retrofits in industrial environments are known to be short-payback energy management solutions due to significant energy savings and incentives. In the case described below, the cost of a massive energy waste prior to retrofit was immaterial, when non-energy benefits were considered. Avoided cost of wasted energy was dwarfed by non-energy operational savings resulting in [...]
When it comes to choosing bulb replacement technology in industrial environment even an extensive comparison of technical characteristics of LED and T8 hardly brings a clear winner. Choice depends on many considerations. We would like to resolve the competition comparing the total cost of ownership in Food & Beverage industry. Let me reiterate that commercially [...]
This post continues the Learning from the Big series about the ways big industrial companies of Ontario deal with energy management. I spoke with Michael Cortese, Energy Manager of ArcelorMittal Dofasco, located in Hamilton. Role of utilities in your business? Utilities are the major cost; they comprise 20%–25% of the direct costs of production. The [...]
