The role of an energy manager is relatively easy to describe. He is the person who recognizes the complex interrelationships in a company and ensures that measures to save energy and thus reduce costs are implemented.
In most cases, these tasks are more complex and time-consuming than the brief description suggests. One of the first and most important tasks of an energy manager should be to assess the performance reference. How high was the power peak, when was it caused and which machines and systems were responsible for it during this period? Creating an analysis and drawing the right conclusions from it is tricky and time-consuming, and very difficult to accomplish without the right tools.
But this was exactly the task I had to carry out as energy manager in my company. First, I had to create a load profile, analyze which consumers were causing the power peaks and whether the connection between these consumers and the power peaks was random or cyclical. Complex tasks that take a lot of time without the right tools.
I was able to use the visual energy energy data acquisition tool from KBR GmbH in Schwabach. First of all, I looked at our last electricity bills to determine the costs per kW/year. Then I created a level-time diagram in which the consumption behavior of the power could be displayed. This was done with just a few clicks and within a few minutes I was able to realize that there are pronounced power peaks in our electricity consumption. Each kW of peak power costs us over 90 euros a year.
Next, I called up the so-called “peak load report” in visual energy. With a few simple steps, I had created a report that detected the highest power peak within the period to be analyzed and at the same time listed the consumers directly involved. This enabled me to identify which machines and systems I needed to take a closer look at due to the simultaneous power consumption. In the next step, I added the largest consumers from the peak load report to the previously created level-time diagram. Now I could see that the start of a plant’s process takes place at any time. If this start coincides with another production line, the result is a high power peak and therefore unnecessarily high costs for the provision of power. Furthermore, other consumers could be identified that could be included in the optimization.
The time required for the entire analysis was completed within 90 minutes thanks to the functions in visual energy.
The next steps consist of selecting the machines and systems and planning the energy optimization. We will be reporting on this in another user report soon.