Industrial energy management and load balancing
In addition to improving the energy efficiency of individual operations, you can
also take steps to monitor and manage energy consumption within your plant or across
an entire industrial site. Energy monitoring enables you to track changes and respond
to unanticipated increases in consumption or inefficiency. Energy management matches
steam, heat, chilled water and power production to planned and changing demand.
Energy load leveling
Matching steam, heat, chilled water and power production to demand is load leveling
or sometimes known as balancing. The closer you match what you make to your
needs, the more you save.
Load balancing systems can serve even processes, plants
or multiple-building sites and campuses with large and unpredictable consumption
patterns. In fact, this is where the savings are largest.
If you use steam, for example, you want to efficiently produce the right amount
at the right time. With a single unit, the boiler master matches output to your
load. With multiple units, a load balancing system will determine when an additional
boiler should be brought online as well as which units will be most efficient at
given total load.
While a predictive energy balancing system might sound complicated, many are straightforward:
a sensor provides advance warning to crank up or down the boiler or chiller to stay
in balance with demand. Load adjustment can be manual or automatic.
More integrated systems report boiler, chiller and power utilization patterns to
the generation process for automatic adjustments to boiler output. Built on standard
technology platforms but fully customizable, these systems factor in ramp and load
rates, fuel prices and other variables critical to your efficiency.
Aligning interests
In addition to cutting across plant departments, industrial energy projects can
also fall into the tricky area between responsibility for making sure product gets
out the door and responsibility for reducing the cost of production. Energy management
systems like load balancing can align even traditionally conflicting interests and
expectations in the plant.
The production manager wants to make sure production is uninterrupted. The controller
wants to reduce costs. The plant general manager wants both and more. Energy management
systems provide accurate data on actual energy use along with the ability to quickly
respond to that data. If knowledge is power, then knowledge and control can only
be more powerful.
Consider the tensions created by the possibility of incurring penalties by exceeding
contractual energy use levels. What if you could anticipate problems and intelligently
shed idle and low-impact processes using the data on one screen? With an energy
monitoring and management system, you can. Real time data on energy supply and demand
can tell whether production spikes threaten to trigger penalties. Operators can
take preventative action.
Longer term, you can monitor production factors to determine which variables and
changes allow your plant to use less energy for the same or higher output. This
is particularly true if you have used the development of an energy management system
to create agreement priorities.
The goal is constant: reduce the cost to produce at a given output. And the power
and energy engineers at RoviSys provide complete services at each level to help
you move toward your goals.
Reducing risks with phased and custom implementation
A first phase for load balancing would be to bring real-time demand information
to the control room. Operators can then use to information to increase or decrease
output. Next would be to automate supply adjustments based on demand predictions
and real-time sensor readings. You can also automate safety and other mandatory
procedures to manage equipment stress during swings in demand.
Next, you can automate or add adjustable compensation for strongly correlated factors.
These might include outside temperature and humidity, upstream production throughput
or any other variable which might lead to an increase or decrease in load.
Because the interface screens and controls for energy leveling systems are custom,
you have the flexibility to include variables and options based on your needs. Chilled
water management can be paired with steam or heat production and use as part of
an overall energy management system. RoviSys engineers can also show you to integrate
energy management with your plant automation and information systems.
Industrial energy monitoring and management services
- Industrial energy system and control audits
- Energy system controls integration
- Supply and demand monitoring sensors and systems
- Data load leveling analysis and correlation
- Energy management and load balancing server engineering
- Data and trend presentation including real-time and historical data
- Data and control integration