Case study: Comprehensive analysis of energy management in industrial facilities

The Industrial Assessment Center at University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee (WM-IAC) has conducted around 115 industrial energy, waste, and productivity assessments, and has recommended $9.4 million of energy cost savings with about 900 recommendations since it was renewed in 2011. This study presents the analysis of the assessments, and the recommendations were completed over 2014 and 2015 years only. Within these two years, a total of forty assessments were performed at different manufacturing facilities with the analysis of the data gathered and processed. The drivers of the data were the number of recommendations, recommended energy savings (in kWh/year), recommended energy cost savings (in US$/year), implemented energy savings (in US$/year), the Standard Industrial Code (SIC) and the groups of Energy Efficiency Opportunities (EEOs). Such a study was meant to reveal the significant of EEOs groups through a variety of SICs in terms of the potential for energy savings, particularly focused towards choosing plant facilities for IAC assessments. Also, this paper could be considered as a guide for plant managers, energy engineers and other personnel involved in the energy assessment process. Conclusions are deduced with respect to the most promising EEOs that can be determined based on the characteristics of the manufacturing plants visited. The data investigated can smooth the path for composing energy demanding industries and expose priority goal areas in terms of minimizing the energy consumption.