9 ways to increase process efficiency to reduce your energy costs

Honeywell's Energy Management Solutions are a customizable portfolio of hardware, software and services to help improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in energy-intensive industrial processes.  According to the United States Department of Energy Industrial Technologies Program, in 2001 nearly 37% of the fuel and electricity delivered “to the fence” of chemical industry facilities was lost in combustion, distribution and energy conversion activities.  This amounts to roughly $4B in losses at today’s natural gas prices of close to $3.00 per MMBtu. Below are 9 ways to leverage Honeywell’s portfolio to reduce energy costs and return those savings back to the bottom line. 1. Keep track of energy usage, benchmark performance, identify performance gaps and opportunities for improvement The first step in considering an online energy management solution is to develop an energy dashboard to measure real-time energy consumption against projected or current values.  This involves capturing energy data related to the process and organizing it in a way that allows users to quickly identify where the big energy consumers are and how well they are doing against objectives.  Learn more about our Energy Dashboard. 2. Measure, measure, measure It’s hard to improve something you can’t measure. While it is relatively common for process streams in plants and mills to have sufficient instrumentation, the utilities systems that support production are often not as well instrumented.  This can make it impossible to determine where unnecessary consumption or leaks are occurring. Wireless instrumentation is an easy, low cost way to obtain essential information to measure your key energy indicators and feed into your reduction strategy. Learn more about OneWireless solutions for energy. 3. Use less energy – but not at the expense of production Multivariable, predictive control and optimization applications can be used to maximize throughput and yields, and minimize energy use. This tool is relatively inexpensive and very suitable for incorporating energy strategies into overall operating objectives because the approach minimizes energy use, but not at the expense of maintaining yield and quality. Learn more about Profit Suite advanced control. 4. Improve the efficiency of your people Implementing an energy management program often includes procedural changes. These changes are integral to the success of the program in meeting its energy efficiency and emissions reduction goals. To make this as successful as possible, effective training and automating simple procedures can increase the ROI of the program. Learn more about Procedural Operations, and UniSim Operate. 5. Build energy efficiency into new process design At the planning stage of a new plant, or a significant expansion/retrofit, some consideration should be given to the energy and environmental efficiency in the design. Simulation tools allow you to incorporate energy objectives into the design phase, and empower you to interactively make decisions by getting immediate responses to energy use assumptions. Learn more about UniSim Design. 6. Manage the electricity use in your facility as well as your process Integrate energy management with your building management tools like HVAC, lighting systems, security, life safety and digital video surveillance, so you’ll not only know where, when and how electricity is being used in your operation, you’ll be able to manage its usage more efficiently, contain costs and increase your leverage with energy suppliers. As the global demand for energy increases and price volatility intensifies, electricity management will become even more critical to the success of your business. Learn more about Energy Management for buildings.  7. Use savings in energy to fund other facility improvements If your organization is like most, energy expenses account for more than 25 percent of your total operating costs - costs usually regarded as a fixed expense. The fact is, Honeywell Energy Management Services can help you control and dramatically reduce those costs - often by 30 percent or more. We can even provide a written guarantee of savings through a guaranteed performance contract. Your organization can use those energy savings to improve your facility, make capital investments and improve your bottom line. Learn more about Performance Contracting.  8. Increase boiler and turbine efficiency Industrial generation plants provide steam and power to the process units and may also supply electricity to the grid at times of excess capacity. These plants contribute significantly to the overall energy and CO2 footprint of the operation. One of the keys to reducing energy costs is balancing changing energy demands from the process with adequate supply from the utilities plant without wasting energy by keeping spare capacity on standby. Learn more about Advanced Energy Solutions for industrial power generators. 9. Sustaining benefits over time In order to truly improve business performance, industry leaders know that whatever energy efficient solution they choose that it must sustain benefits throughout its lifecycle, and ideally, be part of a continuous improvement loop so that benefits actually increase over time.  It has been estimated that up to 5% of the energy savings attained during an energy project can be lost per year going forward if there is no focused effort to sustain these benefits. Learn more about continuous lifecycle support of energy benefits. Want results now? Contact Honeywell to learn more about these solutions and how you can deploy the Energy Dashboard; assess your performance, and address the highest ROI projects first. Want help with a long-term energy management strategy? Honeywell has resources to uncover all the energy savings potential in your process areas, as well as full design, implementation and results optimization capabilities.