While many costs are out of their control, there are line items they can reliably turn to: reducing energy costs by improving energy efficiency and reducing equipment maintenance and replacement needs by enhancing operational efficiency. One strategy that accomplishes both goals is to leverage an energy management platform.
Companies that use an energy management platform like Gazebo™ to reduce wasted energy can leverage the same platform to support their operational efficiency, minimizing unplanned downtime, extending the useful life of their equipment, lowering maintenance costs, and improving staff safety.
This article outlines four specific features of your energy management software that you can use to keep things running smoothly:
Energy management platforms can help identify projects that optimize your equipment and extend its useful life. Low- and no-cost operations and maintenance energy efficiency projects often include opportunities like turning off equipment when not in use or running systems at partial load when possible. These strategies can extend the useful life of the equipment or subsystem—such as air compressors, pumps, or steam systems—saving you money on equipment replacement costs.
Through platforms like Gazebo, you can assess the energy- and cost-saving benefits of different projects to understand how they affect the useful life of your equipment. In Gazebo, you can use Explore to overlay utility meter energy consumption data before and after a change is made to see if the post-optimization process reduced energy consumption.
See it in action: A site reviewed their metered energy data and noted that consumption remained high even during facility shutdowns. The site implemented setbacks for their HVAC system during the December holiday break and other unoccupied hours. Then, they compared the prior year’s December energy consumption to the post-implementation energy consumption. The graph verified significant reduction over the holiday week, as shown in Figure 1, below. By using Gazebo to identify and verify the energy-saving impact of this change, this site simultaneously reduced the load on their HVAC system, extending its useful life, and banked savings to their operational budget as well.
Once you implement an energy-saving measure, you want to ensure that it stays in place, so you continue to get savings and reduce equipment load. Tools like Gazebo track persistence strategies and allow users to document a method for ensuring operations and maintenance projects stay in place. This feature allows you to document what the strategy’s check is and the appropriate frequency–like reviewing compressor settings monthly–to ensure they’re still set at the identified efficient settings. Linking the project and its persistence reinforces the method to the madness: it explains the ongoing strategy and helps shift operational thinking to include energy efficiency. Persistence checks are often most effective when they’re built into your existing workflows.
See it in action: A site updated many set points in their BMS, resulting in significant HVAC energy consumption reductions. When the team reviewed each completed project and created a corresponding persistence strategy in Gazebo, they noted that the main risk that would compromise their energy savings was someone overriding the system settings. The BMS technician developed a report to list any system overrides, and the team created a monthly reminder to check the override report and ensure all the settings are still in place.
Persistence strategies in platforms like Gazebo aren’t just for internal use. These notes can be shared with vendors, so equipment settings are maintained or returned to correct settings after maintenance or replacement activities. This strategy helps ensure routine maintenance activities support both energy and operational efficiencies and that any projects that help extend the useful life of your equipment are sustained by internal staff and external vendors alike. It also helps vendors understand how the equipment is run at the site so they can support scheduling equipment replacements on an accurate timeline–one that neither disrupts operations nor costs you extra money by purchasing a replacement before it’s truly needed.
See it in action: Within their refrigeration system, a food processor uses seven refrigeration compressors that rotate on and off depending on how much cooling is needed. Their refrigeration vendor provides them with trend data on their refrigeration compressors, which should show a correlation between when the compressors turn on and when the coolant floods into the system. But the site noticed something odd in their trend data. Multiple compressors were running at partial power, which was inefficient and inappropriate for their identified needs. It turned out their refrigeration vendor had accidentally switched the settings during a routine maintenance visit, and they needed to be returned to their previous settings. The company documented the persistence strategy for this project in Gazebo and used it to communicate the correct compressor settings to their vendor.
In tools like Gazebo, you can document “non-energy benefits” related to a project. As part of your project documentation, you can make notes that a certain project will extend the useful life of the associated equipment, that it targets one of your most at-risk subsystems, or that it supports improved staff safety. These non-energy-saving benefits become considerations as you develop a prioritized project list.
Projects are often prioritized based on their cost and effort to implement, their energy savings, and their cost savings. By adding in considerations that dovetail with operations and maintenance activities, you can leverage your energy management platform to further support the cost-effectiveness of your energy efficiency activities.
See it in action: During an energy audit, a team member suggested an energy-saving project idea to add insulation on hot water pipes to retain heat in the system and reduce the natural gas consumption needed to replace the lost heat. Another team member noted this project would also improve the area’s safety by preventing the risk of burns from accidentally touching the pipe. The site added this safety benefit to the “Other Savings” field in the Gazebo project. When the time came to pick near-term priority projects, the team selected the pipe insulation project due to the combination of energy and safety outcomes.
Feature Highlight: “Other Savings” field in Gazebo Projects
To support your operational efficiency, you can document non-energy savings or benefits in the Other Savings field of the Gazebo Projects feature. When adding a new energy-saving project to your list in Gazebo, you can add this information alongside rough energy and cost-saving calculations to support prioritization and decision making. Figures 2 and 3 below show how this feature can be used to address safety considerations that coincide with an identified energy-saving project.
Energy management programs are often most successful when their energy benefits are tied to broader financial and operational business goals. Energy management platforms can support you in doing just that. Effective use of your energy management platform can support improved operational efficiency at your facility through:
Ready to dive deeper into using your energy management platform for more? Contact a Gazebo team member today.
