Cut Your Power Bills

Abstract

Electric power bills can often be reduced by careful attention to the inter-relationship between your plant operations and the electric rate schedule on which your bill is based. The pattern of use of electricity by your plant over a given time span is called its load profile. A continuous process operating 365 days a year would have a flat profile whether measured on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. But most plant profiles ere not flat because operations may not be consistent for three shifts a day, seven days a week, all year. Profile characteristics of interest to your utility are maximum demand, load factor, time of demand peaks and valleys and power factor. After discussing each of these characteristics below, we will discuss how electric rate schedules are designed, how they are analyzed, and where you can look for possible savings.