Energy Monitoring for Manufacturing

Jul 16

The plant manager of a large regional wastewater treatment facility sighed as he wrapped up yet another call with the accounting department regarding their enormous energy bill. The big bill didn’t make sense to him, they were using VFDs on all of their pumps, their HVAC systems had been re-tuned for the third time, and their air compression systems were operating well within normal conditions.

The numbers were clear, each month they were using more electricity than anyone had ever anticipated. They had to reduce their energy usage to avoid a costly rate increase.

Fortunately, with a little research the plant manager found a low cost solution: a device called a groov RIO EMU (Energy Monitoring Unit) from Opto 22. The electricians on staff could install the units as well, which was good news since they also needed current transformers to collect energy data on their various pieces of equipment. So, he placed an order with Opto 22.

After the groov RIO EMU units were installed, it was clear just a few days later that a valve manifold in the plant’s headworks was eating electricity like a kid in a candy store.

A trend chart for the dozens of valves showed that they were nearly constantly in motion. And since most of the valves were very large and servicing pipes coming into the plant, moving these valves consumed a lot of electricity. This made sense in the morning when the flow into the plant was highest when customers were showering to start their day, but the constant motion during the majority of the non-peak hours baffled him.

Working with the plant’s controls engineer they determined the PID loop tuning on these valves was extremely aggressive. It hadn’t been adjusted since commissioning when some of the default settings from an autotune operation were put in place.

The controls engineer worked with the operators to make the loop tuning less aggressive while still supporting their operational requirements. Now, the valves maintained their positions during most of the day, only adjusting themselves during peak demand times to handle the increased load on the plant.

Over the course of the next 12 months, the calls from accounting dropped off entirely as they were able to save tens of thousands of dollars per month with the updated control algorithms.

What Is Energy Monitoring and How Does It Work?

Energy Monitoring Screens: mobile device, computer, field HMI

Energy monitoring in manufacturing facilities involves tracking and analyzing electrical consumption, gas usage, and other energy sources across production lines, equipment, and supporting infrastructure. Modern energy monitoring systems deploy smart meters, sensors, and data loggers throughout the facility to capture real-time energy usage data from individual machines, entire production areas, and facility-wide systems like HVAC and lighting. This comprehensive visibility allows manufacturers to understand exactly where and when energy is being consumed, creating a foundation for making informed decisions regarding energy efficiency and cost reduction initiatives.

Implementing energy monitoring systems can deliver significant operational and financial benefits for manufacturing companies. By identifying energy waste, peak demand periods, and inefficient equipment performance, facilities can reduce energy costs by 10-30% through targeted improvements and behavioral changes. Energy monitoring also enhances predictive maintenance strategies (and prevent costly unplanned downtime) by detecting abnormal energy consumption patterns that often precede equipment failures. Additionally, manufacturers can further reduce operational expenses by optimizing production scheduling to take advantage of time-of-use electricity rates and avoid demand charges during peak periods.

Beyond immediate cost savings, energy monitoring supports broader sustainability goals and regulatory compliance requirements that are increasingly important for manufacturing competitiveness. Detailed energy data enables accurate carbon footprint calculations and supports environmental reporting standards like ISO 14001 and greenhouse gas protocols. Many manufacturers use this data to set science-based emissions reduction targets and track progress toward net-zero commitments. Finally, energy monitoring systems provide the documentation and verification needed for energy efficiency incentive programs, utility rebates, and green building certifications. These can be additional value streams while you demonstrate corporate environmental responsibility to customers, investors, and regulatory bodies.

How to Implement Energy Monitoring

Enabling energy monitoring for manufacturing consists of two components:

The hardware used to monitor power usage of your equipment
Integration with your SCADA system to collect, store, and visualize your power and energy data

While there are many options for energy monitoring hardware, we have seen many small to medium manufacturing companies find success with Opto 22’s groov RIO EMU (energy monitoring unit). This purpose-specific device for energy monitoring applications can be installed along with a few current transformers to automatically generate all of the relevant data you need to track power and energy usage.

Then, once you have energy monitoring data available, the next step is to integrate it with your SCADA system. While we can work with all popular SCADA systems, we enthusiastically recommend Ignition from Inductive Automation.

We recently collaborated with Opto 22 to release a free resource on the Ignition Exchange with the relevant user defined data types (UDTs) and screens to display all of the data from RIO EMUs in Ignition. This will make the process of integrating as many EMUs as you need into Ignition as easy as possible.

Install the RIO EMU and your current transformers. Then, once the EMU is connected to the network, it will automatically give you access to everything you need. This data can then be displayed on your HMI screens, correlated with other process data to give your production data context about your energy usage, and help you find efficiencies to reduce your overall utility costs.

Combining RIO EMUs with Ignition is the foundation of the State of Indiana’s Energy INsights program and has been deployed to numerous manufacturing plants across the state with great success. We recommend watching the ICC 2024 presentation from Benson Hougland of Opto 22 and Rebecca Gillespie of Energy INsights for a more detailed breakdown of how this type of program has been deployed for many manufacturing companies specifically focused on energy monitoring.

Energy Monitoring Benefits

The main benefit of energy monitoring is the ability to reduce your electricity bills. This can be a fairly dense topic and will require some effort on your part to fully realize the benefits once your energy monitoring systems are in place.

Common examples we have seen across various industries involve motor operations. Air handling is another potentially costly component of most manufacturing operations. Many air handling systems use fans with motor starters that run the motors at a continuous speed any time they are on.

In automotive manufacturing, this even applies to paint booths used to paint car bodies as they come down the line. When painting a car body, you need to ensure adequate ventilation to maintain air quality in the booth and ensure a high quality result. When painting is complete and the booth is waiting for a new car body to arrive, the fans don’t need to run at full blast. When using motor starters, it can be more costly to start and stop the motors rather than allowing them to run continuously.

By combining energy monitoring on the fans with production data to track energy usage when the booth is idle will quickly show you how much your process costs right now, including the direct costs associated with starting and stopping motors. One approach to reduce these costs is to install Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) on the motors. VFDs save the energy costs of starting and stopping motors, and allowing you to run the motors at a lower speed when they don’t need to run at full speed. VFDs can also help smooth the airflow by adjusting the speed to maintain air quality. One Energy INsights participant was able to reduce their overall paint booth utility costs by 20% using VFDs, with the savings covering the cost of the equipment upgrade in just 12 months.

The possibilities for utility cost reductions are numerous in most manufacturing operations and can extend to other areas like air compressor regulation, HVAC improvements, and even electrical issues related to metal parts processing. If you would like to explore the possibilities for using energy monitoring to reduce your energy and utility costs please reach out to Corso Systems and we are happy to help!

Wrapping Up

Manufacturing processes use a lot of energy. As the saying goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” and we have found many companies are flying blind in terms of energy usage. The main performance indicator for most companies is the amount of their energy bills.

While this post is focused on the electrical portion of energy monitoring, there are also options available for gas usage for processes with heat treating equipment with significant savings available through minor adjustments in your process.

Corso Systems has helped many companies reduce their overall energy costs across a variety of industries. To find out how you can take advantage of these tools in your facility please reach out to us today!