An efficient energy management system helps companies to make judicious usage of energy, thereby reducing their operational costs while increasing competitiveness

Industries worldwide are creating competitive differentiation through innovative methods, product diversification, mergers and acquisitions and are continually adding pressure on end deliverables. They try to succeed in the market by curtailing costs and improving operational efficiency. In such a scenario, energy efficiency assumes great significance as a key differentiator.

Sudeep Edakkattu, sales head, Power T&D, Honeywell Automation India Limited

Need for plant energy management

At present, industrial energy usage holds immense financial significance. There are abundant opportunities to enhance power usage, reliability and quality in an industrial environment. Almost every production operation can optimise the usage of power by owning an efficient and powerful control system.

The existing plant energy management frameworks suffer from several loopholes. Large and complex power networks are often difficult to manage and encounter problems due to disturbances and considerations such as multiple power sources, complex distribution network etc.

A good energy management framework should be able to optimise, monitor and control electrical energy while helping plant managers see the big picture. It helps in using capital assets judiciously and commits to productivity rather than complexity.

An efficient energy management system (EMS) provides complete solution for making judicious use of energy, improving cost effectiveness, increasing production and system stability and enhancing awareness of energy generation and usage.

Let’s take a case study of the award winning EMS implemented at Tata Steel to renovate and modernise its existing load dispatch centre (LDC) and improve grid stability.

The advanced applications used at the Tata Steel plant include the following:

·         Dynamic and fast load shedding – This feature ensures stability of the plant network in the event of power system disturbances. Through this feature, users from LDC can modify the existing load shedding and at the same time define the new one.

·         Economic power drawl - This function ensures that power consumption at any given time happens in the most economical manner depending on electrical network conditions. The actual costs of generation as well as optimum cost of generation subject to various constraints are calculated at regular intervals. This activity then suggests the optimum loading for each plant to drive the actual cost towards the optimum cost.

·         Maximum demand control – This feature helps to control the maximum demand as per sanctioned/set demand.

·         Load forecasting - This function helps predict the load in advance for particular day(s) based on inputs of previous months and years. The database holds historical data and other parameters for at least 2 years as well as 15-minute load values.

Therefore, the benefits of a good EMS can be summed up as follows:

·         Judicious use of energy through latest planning tools to forecast demand and plan accordingly

·         Meets energy requirement in a cost-effective manner by production scheduling and resource optimisation 

·         Helps avoid peak tariff and provides increased system stability through load planning, tie line monitoring and load shedding

·         Enhances consciousness of energy generation, usage and purchases resulting in improved cost effectiveness

·         Since all the vital energy parameters are automatically-monitored, evaluated and reported round the clock on a real time basis, it is easy to use

Sudeep Edakkattu, sales head, Power T&D, Honeywell Automation India Limited, a leading service provider of integrated automation and software solutions, headquartered in Pune