Kitt Butler Presents at 2016 Motor Summit

The Motor Summit is a conference organized by Impact Energy, and held every other year in Zurich, Switzerland. It brings together a variety of professionals and organizations working in the motors and drives industry to share developments and updates. This year’s event featured segments on global overview and policy, standards and requirements, compliance, motor driven systems, energy management, and more.

As Kitt Butler, Senior Program Manager for the Motors and Drives division at Advanced Energy, described it, “For two days the world’s policy makers, manufacturers, and advocates for motor driven system efficiency came together to share best practices and discuss existing and emerging policies. Motor efficiency has already achieved significant savings through responsible regulation and is set to continue to expand much further with driven systems well into the future. The event concluded with an inspirational presentation from the World Wildlife Fund that directly connected the work being done to improve motor system efficiency to climate change.”

Kitt attended the Motor Summit, his first one, on behalf of CLASP. CLASP is an international non-profit formed to improve the environmental and energy performance of appliances. It is the operating agent for the Super-efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment (SEAD) Initiative, which is a voluntary collaboration between 16 national governments and the European Commission to promote energy-saving products. SEAD is an initiative of the Clean Energy Ministerial and a task of the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC). Other SEAD partners include the Electric Motor Systems Annex (EMSA, also led by Impact Energy) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Through the SEAD Initiative, Advanced Energy, along with the U.S. Department of Energy and SEAD partners, is conducting research on the connection between energy management systems (EnMS) and awareness of policies and incentives that promote efficiency opportunities in electric motor driven systems (EMDS). The project seeks to understand how companies and facilities with an EnMS identified their EMDS efficiency opportunities and what policies enabled them to complete those projects. At the Motor Summit, Kitt provided an update on this project in a presentation titled “Linking Energy Management Systems and Motor Efficiency Incentive Policies.”

The project, which is led by Matt Davey, a Motors and Drives Consultant at Advanced Energy, initially sent out surveys to facility operators in three countries: the United States, the Netherlands, and South Africa. These countries were selected based on the availability of programs and incentives, and access to relevant data and information. Canada was added later to broaden the scope of the project. The survey sought to understand facilities’ motivations for implementing an EnMS, how EMDS efficiency opportunities were identified, and what incentives were used. However, in part because of a slow survey response rate, additional approaches were implemented as well. For example, the Industrial Energy Efficiency (IEE) Project produced case studies about South African facilities, and these reports were assessed for relevant information. Furthermore, reviewing existing data and networking have provided more companies that have implemented an EnMS.

Although the project is still ongoing, preliminary results are promising. Facilities often implement an EnMS to increase energy sustainability, lower energy consumption and costs, and reduce environmental impact. Promoting employee awareness, using energy monitoring (such as equipment metering), and taking advantage of technical training courses are important steps that have helped facilities identify efficiency opportunities. Encouraging external energy assessments and audits is also beneficial.

The more data that can be collected, the better, so if you are a facility that has implemented an EnMS and sought out EMDS efficiency opportunities, we want to hear from you! Please take the time to fill out this short survey. Your input would be extremely helpful and greatly appreciated.

Being able to connect with and learn from other professionals is an excellent way to stay up to date on what is happening in the industry, and overall, Kitt had a great experience at the Motor Summit. “I have worked in the motors and drives industry for a long time and have attended many industry events, but nothing in my career compares to the collection of people I was fortunate to join at the 2016 Motor Summit. I was honored to represent SEAD and present our project results to date with CLASP and project partner EMSA. I would welcome the opportunity to attend this event again.”

For more information, please contact Kitt at kbutler@advancedenergy.org.