Tools for Monitoring Your Business's Energy Usage

Electricity is one of the largest monthly expenses for many businesses. But figuring out how to reduce those bills can feel daunting, especially if you don’t have a clear picture of how much energy you’re using in different parts of your business. 

Understanding your usage is the first step toward knowing how much you can save. Efficiency Smart offers two free services to help your business measure its energy use and identify meaningful energy cost-cutting opportunities.

Power Metering for Industrial Equipment

Manufacturing equipment like injection molders, blow molders, and industrial air compressors uses a lot of electricity. If you’re considering upgrading any of them, reach out to Efficiency Smart first. You might be able to borrow a power data logger for free. This device measures the energy use of a single piece of equipment, so you have a baseline against which to compare your new equipment. This allows your business to quantify the energy and cost savings from your equipment upgrade and helps you qualify for potential rebates.

A maintenance staff member or electrician installs the power data logger on a single piece of equipment. It can run anywhere from one day to a month, depending on your manufacturing lifecycle. The power data logger records how much energy that piece of equipment uses. For air compressors, it helps establish the load profile, so you can see how often and how hard the equipment is working. 

Efficiency Smart’s engineering consultants can use this data to calculate potential energy and cost savings from upgrading certain manufacturing equipment to a newer, more efficient model. For air compressors, this analysis might reveal that your business could benefit from a variable frequency drive (VFD) instead of upgrading the whole compressor.  

Equipped with this data, you’ll be surprised at how much you can save. For example, hydraulic injection molders typically use 0.4 kWh/lb., whereas all-electric injection molders use around 0.15 kWh/lb. That’s more than 50% energy savings. Southeastern Container in Bowling Green, OH, is saving more than $270,000 annually from this kind of upgrade. 

Light Loggers for Optimized Lighting in Your Facility

Lighting is another area businesses should review to save energy. LEDs use less electricity than traditional bulbs and also last longer, meaning you’ll spend less time and money on maintenance. 

Whether you’ve already upgraded to LEDs or are planning to soon, you might want to borrow a light logger from Efficiency Smart. The light logger reveals whether your lights are on when you don’t actually need them, like overnight. An Efficiency Smart engineering consultant  installs the device, which collects data for anywhere from one day to one week, depending on your manufacturing lifecycle or office schedule. 

An Efficiency Smart engineering consultant will analyze the data to identify targeted opportunities to reduce lighting costs. You can determine whether your business is already using lighting efficiently or could benefit from occupancy sensors that automatically turn lights off when the space isn’t in use. Using data from the light logger, you might be eligible for a rebate to help reduce the upfront cost of an occupancy sensor. 

LEDs and occupancy sensors are a winning combination. At KOSEI in St. Marys, OH, the facility is saving $150,000 a year on lighting alone. 

Get Started  

To see if these tools are a good fit for your business, or to see how else we can help, reach out to your local account manager or call us at 877-889-3777.