All energy assessments involve evaluating your energy usage and identifying areas for improvement. We provide recommendations that help you become more energy efficient and save money. We also work closely with electric utilities and can provide insight and financial analysis on the possibilities of incentives. If desired, we can conduct a formal ASHRAE Level One or Level Two energy audit.
Once energy-saving projects are identified, we can provide the following additional support:
- Technical research
- Contact with equipment vendors in relevant fields
- Evaluation of equipment quotes
- Turnkey energy balance analysis of potential impact of implementation
- Measurement of actual electrical consumption on specific loads both before and after energy-saving measures are implemented
- Financial analysis of possible solutions
- Energy balance estimate before and after
- Cash flow
- Net present value
- Simple payback
We can conduct detailed assessments of facilities, processes and specific energy-consuming systems:
Commercial Facilities
Typical Types:
- Agricultural
- Big-box retail
- Colleges and universities
- Distribution centers
- Entertainment
- Food service
- Hospitals
- Hotels
- Schools
- Small retail
- Warehouses
- Offices
- Other
Typical Energy Systems
- Boilers/steam systems
- Building management systems
- Chillers
- HVAC systems
- Lighting
- Motors and VFDs
- Refrigeration
Industrial Facilities
Typical Types
- Primary processing plants
- Parts and components manufacturing plants
- Assembly and finishing plants
- Water and wastewater treatment plants
- Others
Typical Energy Systems
- Boilers/steam systems
- Chillers
- Compressed air
- HVAC systems
- Lighting
- Material handling
- Motors and VFDs
- Pumping systems
- Refrigeration
Industrial Processes
In addition to looking at your facility energy, we offer process assessments in which we analyze your entire production process from raw materials to finished goods. We work with you to break down and understand each step along the way to help you identify and take advantage of potential energy savings in all aspects of your production processes.
Transformation is a key component of process assessments. We develop a process block diagram to identify the basic steps in transforming your raw material into your final product. Understanding these steps in terms of their required energy input is useful for determining where potential process energy savings can be realized and helps answer the following questions:
- What are the processes?
- What equipment is used to complete each process?
- What technology is built into the equipment?
- What level of energy is consumed by each process?
- What opportunities exist to improve the process for energy savings and non-energy benefits?
Our process assessments focus on helping manufacturing sites optimize their processes to reduce energy intensity in terms of energy consumed per unit of product.
We work closely with equipment vendors, technology centers, technical trade associations and electric utilities to ensure that we can provide you with the best and most efficient manufacturing processes analysis.
We maintain a detailed Process Heating Vendor Database of over 250 process equipment vendors and participate in many trade associations to ensure that we stay up to date on manufacturing processes.
Assessments frequently lead to non-energy benefits as well, including:
- Better employee involvement
- Better quality performance
- Better space utilization
- Continuous improvement
- Faster changeovers
- Fewer defects
- Fewer machine breakdowns
- Fewer process errors
- Greater levels of stock turnover
- Higher process efficiencies
- Higher profits
- Higher team commitment
- Improved delivery performance
- Improved employee morale
- Improved product quality
- Improved safety
- Improved supplier relations
- Improved workflow
- Improved worker comfort
- Increased available floor space
- Increased capacity
- Increased productivity
- Increased profits
- Less rework
- Less scrap
- Less waste
- Lower operating costs
- Lower levels of inventory
- More output per energy unit input
- More output per person-hour
- More streamlined processes
- Process bottleneck breakdown
- Reduced emissions
- Reduced overtime