Investments in energy management are strongly bound to both legislation and energy costs. In the long run, legislations will become stricter and energy costs will rise. Therefore, while Europe is currently the focus of energy management, the topic will clearly become more global over time.
According to a recent ARC Advisory Group study, “Energy Management Global Market Research Study”, the industrial energy management market remains very diverse, with some customers still at the basic energy metering stage, while others have begun to implement more comprehensive and sophisticated energy management solutions involving demand response.
Getting Started – Quantifying the Unknown
“Energy measurement is critical and many still struggle to meter efficiently to measure the right energy flows and to draw the right conclusions,” commented Florian Gueldner, principal author of the study. “Measuring energy consumption alone has no immediate financial benefit, since further action by the operator is required to reduce energy-related costs and penalties. Since this may require additional investments on the part of the industrial organization, the challenge is to justify measurement of an unknown parameter with unclear saving potential.”
In these capital-constrained times, this is a less-than-ideal situation, but KPIs and rules of thumb can help to justify investment. Typically, companies that made the first steps in energy management also continue up this path rather quickly.
Decoupling Energy Consumption and Production
Plants are complex enough to operate and integrating energy management and responses to energy prices and electricity availability will further increase this complexity. A key goal will be to de-couple production from energy supply. This could be accomplished via industrial co-generation and/or energy buffering using batteries, flywheels, compressed air storage, and other technologies. It’s also important to identify industrial assets that could be switched off when not required to maintain production and for which power quality and continuity are not as critical.
Europe – The Largest Market and Still Growing Strong
Europe took a leading role in the area of energy management. Many end users in energy-intensive industries have already harvested the “low hanging fruit” and will move on to more complicated and more capital-intensive projects. However, in Europe, we expect the fastest growth to be not in the process industries, but in automotive and food & beverage.
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