Is Your Food & Beverage Plant Energy Bill Too High? By Katie Schauer How much is your food & beverage plant’s energy bill? Chances are pretty good that reducing that bill is something you’ve discussed. The food & beverage sector is one of the top 5 consumers of fuels and power in US manufacturing, with Grain & Oilseed Milling leading the consumption. Improving energy efficiency can result in huge operational savings. Food & Beverage facilities average electrical consumption of 250 to 1500kWh per ton of food produced alone. And it is estimated that 40 percent of the value of processed food is added through energy-intensive manufacturing in areas such as process heating and cooling systems (steam systems, ovens, furnaces, and refrigeration units). These systems are also critical to maintain food safety. Motor driven systems (pumps, fans, conveyors, mixers, grinders, and other process equipment) represent 12 percent of the sector’s energy use, and facility functions (heat, ventilation, lighting, etc.) comprise approximately eight (8) percent. However, while most plants are aware of their energy costs, not every manufacturing plant has the visibility to correlate energy consumption data with production operations, making it difficult to make the operational changes necessary to precipitate any significant reduction in energy usage. With over 20 years of Food & Beverage Manufacturing IT Solution experience, InSource helps clients implement solutions that drive lower energy consumption. A key first step is correlating energy data with operations data, then building improvement programs to help teams continuously measure, analyze and improve. Simple, but not easy. To learn more, download this presentation, “Uncovering Energy Saving Opportunities and Reducing Operational Cost.” It covers the 3 steps you can take now, insights on how AVEVA’s Energy Performance for Manufacturing assembles the data that is locked in disparate systems to visualize a plant’s energy use with operational context, and stories of Food Plants who have implemented these approaches. You can also visit our Food and Beverage Industry page to see the top 5 business issues we can solve for you.
