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 more closely 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