Measure It, See It, Manage It: Using Real Time Data to Benchmark, Optimize, and Sustain System Energy Efficiency

Thomas Taranto, Data Power Services, LLC
Aimee McKane, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Ricardo Amon, California Energy Commission
Michael Maulhardt, Del Monte Foods

Keywords

Abstract

Even after years of training and awareness building at the state and national level, industrial cross-cutting systems (motor-driven, steam, process heating) continue to offer significant opportunities for energy savings. The US Department of Energy estimates these remaining savings at more than 7% of all industrial energy use. This paper presents a different approach to promoting industrial system energy efficiency - providing plant personnel with ready access to data upon which to base energy management decisions.
In 2005, a Del Monte Foods fruit processing plant in Modesto, California worked with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to specify and purchase permanent instrumentation for monitoring their compressed air system. This work, completed as part of a demonstration project under a State Technologies Advancement Collaborative (STAC) grant, was designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of enterprise energy management (EEM), which is predicated on the assumption that the energy efficiency of existing, cross-cutting industrial systems (motor-driven, steam) can be improved by providing management and operating personnel with real-time data on energy use. The initial STAC grant provided for the installation and some initial analyses, but did not address the larger issue of integrating these new data into an ongoing energy management program for the compressed air system. The California Energy Commission (CEC) decided to support further analysis to identify potential for air system optimization. Through the CEC’s Energy in Agriculture Program, a compressed air system audit was performed by Tom Taranto to:

Measure and document the system’s baseline and CASE Index of present operation;
Establish methods to sustain an ongoing CASE Index measure of performance;
Use AIRMaster+ to analyze supply side performance as compared to the CASE Index;
Identify demand side opportunities for efficiency and performance improvement;
Assess supply / demand balance and energy reduction opportunities;
Evaluate the present air compressor control strategy and potential improvement, and
Collect data to benchmark parameters for compressed air systems at similar facilities.

This paper addresses the benefits and limitations of both continuous and targeted measurement in benchmarking, optimizing, and sustaining an efficient compressed air system. Included are methods used in applying both of these measurements to a complex industrial system. Further, this paper will describe the results of these additional analyses and the plant response to them.