Benchmarking Process Energy Performance From Historical Data: Bringing Sanity into Energy Budgets

Abstract

Reducing energy costs has two components: knowledge of process energy consumption and an energy management process. This concept is summed up in energy management's 2-M rule: to manage energy, energy must be measured. After data on process energy consumption is collected, however, how is it used in developing an energy management system? There are many current methods available for tracking energy use in industrial processes. There are also methods for determining optimum energy use targets for manufacturing processes. In any energy management system, however, a major component is an energy consumption target. The target is used to measure the process's progress in reducing energy costs. This paper describes a method to develop a process energy benchmark from historical data for use as that target.