How are businesses dealing with the energy crisis?
The general feeling, in the first months of the energy crisis, was that the cost increase would dissolve in a short time. Instead, it did not happen.
Ongoing high prices had an impact on the evaluation of strategic actions that include long-term cost and benefit analysis. In the same time it expedited energy efficiency investments.
The need to promote energy efficiency and to achieve the related economic savings is increasingly urgent, given that energy is becoming more and more precious and less and less accessible.
Indeed, even the less energy-intensive companies, when preparing their strategic plans, are starting again from the energy audits, in order to understand their current state.
The first step is to start a process of continuous improvement aimed at reducing the incidence of energy costs on the product’s total costs.
Therefore the energy audit report today must be more accurate than ever and should lead to tangible improvements.
One of the first steps adopted to control energy cost involves “zero cost” management measures. Starting to question established habits in order to cut waste.
Anyway, after this first step, it is necessary to broaden the horizon as much as possible by going beyond the classic proposals (for example replacing machines with more efficient ones), in order to save energy through more substantial changes.
Why faster action on energy efficiency is needed
The current challenges regarding energy security and energy prices remind us that energy efficiency is more indispensable than ever.
The cleanest, cheapest, most reliable source of energy is what companies can avoid using, while still providing full comfort for their employees and assure the same quality of products.
This avoided energy demand results from a wide range of measures, reflecting the diverse nature of efficiency-related technologies and actions across all sectors.
Elements of avoided energy demand include:
- technical efficiency,
- electrification,
- behaviour change
and other avoided energy demand such as from:
- digitalisation,
- material efficiency,
- and other fuel switching.
Faster action on efficiency-related measures can avoid an extra 95 Exajoules of energy demand by 2030 even as the economy grows. Source: 7th Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency – ©IEA 2022
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The Electrex Solutions for tackling rising energy costs
The first step in setting up an energy efficiency project is to understand where, how and when the energy (electricity, gas, etc.) is used.
Energy must be able to be managed and rationalized like any other raw material and to do so, it is necessary to start from continuous monitoring in real time.
Some of the concrete actions, applied for years by the users of Electrex solutions, to balance the rising energy costs are:
- Set up intelligent and shared management of data to increase efficiency, operational and decision-making speed
- Calculation of plant yields to reduce energy waste
- Identify and reduce waste thanks to Energy Automation applications
- Manage cost centers to determine and act on the energy impact of each product or activity
- Automatically manage the most convenient energy sources
- Compare energy consumption between different machines or production sites
- Calculate the payback times on investments that have the goal of energy efficiency
- Manage alarms and warnings that allow for immediate controls and interventions
- Monitor and manage all environmental parameters (temperature, humidity, luminosity, CO2, etc.) and process parameters (compressed air, calories, level, status, etc.) which are always closely correlated with energy consumption.
The Electrex monitoring and management solutions are used in the Energy Efficiency and Energy Automation applications, in the industrial, commercial,
residential, public buildings and renewable energy systems (PV, Wind, Batteries, etc.) and allow a return on investment in a short time.
They are the ideal solution for energy audits, continuous monitoring (e.g. ISO 50001) and for energy efficiency projects (e.g. EU Directive 2018/2002 and White Certificates or Energy Efficiency Certificates, Directive 2018/844 / EU – the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and LEED certification).
Electrex systems are modular and can expand over time thanks to the multiple connection possibilities of the devices: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, RS485, E-Wi, WM-Bus, ExpBus, NFC.
With a single system (with data synchronization) it is possible to monitor and manage all the energy vectors (electricity, gas, water, etc.), the environmental parameters related to them (temperature, humidity, luminosity, CO2, etc.) the process parameters (compressed air, calories, level, status, etc.), and the operating times.
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About us
Since 1993 Electrex designs, develops, manufactures and markets, Made in Italy, instruments and software for energy management and control.
The Electrex solutions are used in the Energy Efficiency and Energy Automation applications, for the industrial, commercial, public, civil, and renewable energy sectors allowing a rapid return on investment.
The solutions provided up to now allow the management of over 465,000 measuring points and more than 820,000 points are controlled via Energy Automation applications.
Electrex, one of the first companies to operate in these sectors, has acquired over the years a considerable experience and competence that few other companies can claim to have. With over 40% of the staff dedicated to R & D, we demonstrate our strong commitment to innovation and continuous improvement in order to anticipate the needs of our customers.
