Five Things to Know About Reducing Energy Costs - Part 5 of 5

Adopt a Long-Term View of Energy Savings

The National Small Business Association recently conducted an energy survey (http://www.nsba.biz/docs/09nsba_energy_survey_indd.pdf) of small businesses throughout the United States.  Of the businesses surveyed, 90% stated that rising energy costs had a demonstrably negative impact on their business, forcing them to raise prices, lay off employees, limit production runs, and reduce benefits in order to cope with these volatile costs.  How can these unacceptable consequences be reduced or eliminated?

The first step is to conduct an energy survey of your business.  Without knowing how, when, and in what quantities your facility is using energy, there is no way to be certain that any energy-saving efforts are having an effect at all.  Energy usage should not only be examined for quantity consumed, but also from an operational standpoint.  Are there processes which could be batched together?  Can any processes be rescheduled to off-peak hours (early in the morning or after 7pm in the evening) to take advantage of lower energy rates?  How can shifts be scheduled to reduce the amount of time that lights and environmental controls are needed?

Once an energy survey is conducted, the various types of solutions for a particular facility should be examined.  Premium efficiency motors and soft-starters are wonderful devices, but unless they apply to your specific facility, they are nothing but a waste of money.  For example, a large warehouse with only a few process machines that run lightly loaded and only intermittently might realize better energy savings by using skylights and line reactors or VFDs rather than premium efficiency motors.  A large aggregate plant, on the other hand, would probably benefit most from premium efficiency motors, due to the immense horsepower requirements of the equipment and the length of time that the equipment might be running.  A fan or pump, on the other hand, might see a dramatic increase in energy consumption with premium efficiency motors, as the higher operating speeds of premium efficiency motors might require the use of a VSD or other reduction drive to keep output revolutions similar to those of the old motor.

No “magic bullet” exists for every single application.  Although the advantages of premium efficiency motors and other cost-saving measures are real and valid, not every single application will be able to capitalize upon them.  For energy saving measures to be done properly, an in-depth examination of your facility in conjunction with the efforts of an experienced sales engineer is necessary.  This ensures that you are putting your money to use in the best possible fashion, realizing the greatest possible return, and eliminating the most amount of costs possible.