One of our clients – an aluminum foundry – installed SiteWatch in August of this year, and-within the first 30 days- identified savings that would pay for the entire system.
The specific savings opportunities were:
- Energy Savings – by addressing leakage from the Compressed Air system
- Machine Failure Prevention – by identifying oven-operating issues.
ENERGY SAVINGS
Most manufacturers suspect that their compressed air system is plagued by constant leakage, but until now it has been difficult to quantify the cost and justify the expense or repairs.
Here’s what SiteWatch revealed:
The graph below shows a compressor supplying air for plant operations until 13:00; then it simply idles to keep up with the leaks and maintain positive pressure, shutting down about once an hour when the ‘set’ pressure is reached.
As you can see, it’s using about 50kW an hour – simply keeping up with the leaks! This situation continues 24×7, both when the plant is running and when it’s shut down, because the leaks don’t go away during plant operation.
Using SiteWatch, we can accurately quantify the cost of not fixing the leaks: 50kW/hour x 8760 hrs. x 5.7 cents/kWh = about $25,000/year. This easily justifies the cost of repairs and pays for SiteWatch for the next two years!
FAILURE PREVENTION
As a bonus, SiteWatch revealed that one of the 3-phase furnaces was running on 2 phases only. As a consequence, several of the heating elements were being overworked in order to maintain the core temperature, a condition that would have resulted in premature failure.