Up Time Magazine - February/March 2009 - (Page 10) There is also a great deal of content supporting manufacturing and industry. Under the section entitled “Guidelines for Energy Management”, you will find a complete overview of the EPA’s recommendations to business and industry for energy conservation programs. The basis of these guidelines is a variation of the renowned Edwards Deming “quality circle” shown in Figure 1. The bottom line: energy conservation should be treated like any other process improvement program. It needs its own plan, implementation and tracking processes while being centrally and independently managed for optimum and sustainable results. Re-Assess My company, ENthEnergy, LLC, is a proud Energy Star Partner. Much of what you need to know about starting and maintaining a good Energy Conservation Program can be found on the Energy Star website. The government has spent a great deal of time and money in hosting this site and many organizations regard it as their “bible” of energy saving references. For those non-commercial buildings for which Energy Star does not maintain a database, the Department of Energy maintains an excellent profile database for mostly industrial facilities. In my experience, the best Energy Conservation Programs are created, managed and maintained by the same group or department responsible for the Reliability Program. This could be either plant engineering or maintenance, because they work hand-in-hand. The most frequent common denominator of both reliability and energy conservation is the daily hands on connection between the operations staff and the energy equipment. A maintenance person can not only hear a bad bearing by standing near the equipment but also spot energy related items like a loose belt, chattering set of contactors or an ineffective boiler flame. There are several areas of the Energy Conservation Program that need emphasis here: Make Commitment Assess Performance And Set Goals Create Action Plan Recognize Achievements Implement Action Plan Evaluate Progress First; the long-term commitment Figure 1 - Guidelines for Energy Management to the Energy Program by top man– EPA’s energystar.gov agement is paramount. A business initiative is only as good as the top level management buy-in. A firm commitment by top management to the sustainable enactment of an energy program is often initiated by an analysis of the very attractive ROI on time and capital. In my experience, it is not unreasonable to predict at least a 5% to 15% reduction in energy costs from a good proactive Energy Conservation Program (not including major retrofit or replacement capital projects). The cost of an effective Energy Program need not exceed 2% or 3%, netting a very quick payback. In addition to ROI, management should realize that Energy Conservation Programs must also be sustainable - not one-and-done projects. Like effective reliability programs, Energy Programs require diligent, long-term actions by maintenance personnel to insure optimal efficiency and use. For instance, many systems are used to optimize efficiency. These systems can be easily overridden to accommodate operations at certain times, but not be restored to their original “conservation” mode. So, diligence to ensure the Energy Program’s success in paramount. Management can also be shown how capital improvement projects that replace old or inefficient energy equipment can have a very reasonable payback. ENthEnergy recently concluded a large building assessment program for Duke Energy in North Carolina that included capital improvement recommendations in more than 10 february/march 2009 http://www.energystar.gov http://www.sdtnorthamerica.com http://www.sdtnorthamerica.com
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