A comparative study of industrial energy assessments for small and medium-sized industrial facilities

The Industrial Assessment Center at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (WM-IAC) has implemented over 100 industrial energy, waste, and productivity assessments, and has recommended $9.5 million of energy and operational savings with about 950 recommendations since it was re-established in 2011. This paper analyzes the assessments, and the recommendations were performed over two years only, 2014 and 2015. During these two years, a total of 40 assessments were created by visiting different manufacturing facilities with the analysis of the data gathered and processed. The determinants of the data were the number of recommendations, recommended energy savings (in kWh/year), recommended energy cost savings (in US$/year), implemented energy savings (in US$/year), the Standard Industrial Code (SIC) and the groups of Energy Efficiency Opportunities (EEOs). Such an analytical study was meant to reveal the significance of EEO groups through a variety of SICs in terms of the potential for energy savings, particularly focused towards choosing plant facilities for IAC assessments. Additionally, this paper could be considered as a guide for plant managers, energy engineers and other personnel involved in the energy assessment process. Conclusions are inferred with respect to the most promising EEOs that can be resolved based on the characteristics of the manufacturing plants visited. The information investigated can pave the way for composing energy demanding industries and expose priority goal areas regarding minimizing the energy consumption.