Les Hunt takes a look at Mitsubishi Electric's all-embracing approach to solving its client's energy management problems, fielding experts from outside its own organisation and developing special software tools that make use of existing control infrastructure to identify sources of energy wastage
Mitsubishi set up its Energy Centre some three years ago to address the growing complexity of energy issues - climate change, carbon emissions, legislation, taxation - and to apply modern technologies to the problems of energy wastage in the commercial and industrial sectors. As recently appointed Energy Centre executive manager, Alistair Norman explains, Mitsubishi, as a technology company, could not provide all the answers by itself, so the solution was to partner with organisations offering expertise in different aspects of energy management. The result - the Melsec Energy Centre - is now essentially a one-stop shop that is able to offer practical advice on any energy related subject.
Having operated in a consultancy or advisory role to date, the Centre recently extended its offering to embrace long term energy management strategies that achieve significant savings for clients. Existing partners, BPX, L C Automation and Pneumatic Lines have extended their involvement in turn, and are joined by newcomer, Energys, which is a well-established creator of long term energy management programmes. Vince Wells brings his Energys experience to bear as operations manager of the Energy Centre.
The role of the Centre is now more closely focused on providing audits and surveys, the creation of long term or staged energy strategies and overseeing the practical implementation of energy saving schemes by partner companies. The objective is now to develop long term relationships with clients to ensure that energy performance is regularly assessed and optimised for maximum return on investment.
So, what are the practical measures that can be taken to obtain long term benefits from an energy management strategy? Clearly, there are many, many measures that can be taken in a piecemeal fashion - you have to start somewhere, after all. But perhaps the most sensible starting point is to ascertain exactly what is going on in your facility across the board. And one way of doing that is to take advantage of measured variables, which are acquired automatically by plant control or building management systems.
Mitsubishi has developed special software that collects this data for the purposes of analysing plant utilisation, energy usage and so on. The package, MX4 Energy, generates reports from this data, either by interactively browsing on the fly or by scheduling specific outputs. These include league tables, exception reports, benchmarking, targeting, budgeting, data quality and consumption/cost profiles. The reports are created via customisable templates to give a consistency of output for ease of understanding.
Routine reporting tasks may be assigned to the scheduler, ensuring that they run automatically on a regular basis. Reports and data can be printed out, forwarded by email or saved in HTML format for posting directly to an Internet or intranet site. Data, text and graphical elements can be combined in these reports, which can also include actual production or building operation costs based on real utility tariff structures.
The Report Generator can be used for general data browsing and to create daily and weekly costing reports, monthly reports and summaries, overspend and exceptions, usage profiles, function and associated cost pairing. MX4 Energy also offers automated data quality checks, statistical analysis and target band analysis to provide continuity of energy surveys and a useful tool for project management.
Mitsubishi believes this package helps achieve 5 to 20% energy cost savings, thanks to its ease of use and automatic data collection function. It can be integrated directly with Mitsubishi's own proprietary control hardware as well as that from many third party suppliers. Using the system to detect and remedy energy wastage can, depending upon the severity of the losses, provide a very fast return on investment. Thereafter, the energy efficiency gains will continue to add to the bottom line of the balance sheet.