Air Equipment Compressed air energy audits

Air Equipment Energy Audits are aimed at identifying exactly where you could be saving energy in your compressed air system. Our audits take a ‘whole system’ approach rather than just looking at your air compressor or plant room. We find that this whole system approach is by far the most effective way to analyse your air system, enabling us to identify areas for improvement on both the supply and demand side.

With increasing energy costs a fact of life for business, and carbon and emissions levies and taxes a looming reality, the performance and efficiency of you compressed air system have never been more important. Potential energy savings not only reduce the environmental impact of your business, they also return money to your bottom line.

The output of the energy audit is a single page ‘traffic light report’ which identifies the areas where effort should be focused to reduce energy usage. a typical report is shown below.

Download a sample energy audit report here

Energy efficiencies can be identified on both the supply and demand side

Supply side – plant room

20 – 40% savings can be commonly found on the supply side of a compressed air system by identifying areas of improvement in:

Air compressors, dryers, filtration and pipework

Technology – variable speed compressors, controllers and remote monitoring

Controls – electronic controllers to improve the efficiency of the compressors

Monitoring – remote monitoring such as Iconn

Equipment maintenance – Keep the your equipment working efficiently

Installation issues – is all your equipment installed correctly, is the energy used being re-used?

Pipework – Is the plant room pipework correctly sized and configured?

Demand side – Workshop

A further 20 – 30% of savings can be found on the demand side of a compressed air system by identifying areas of improvement in

Compressed air leaks – on average 30% of compressed air made is lost via leaks in pipework and hoses etc

Artificial demand – Is demand controlled adequately on your workshop equipment

System dynamics – Do you isolate all air usage when not in use?

System design – Is the pipework layout effective and efficient

Monitoring – When was your pipework last inspected or maintained

How do we carry out a compressed air energy audit?

An energy audit is normally completed by one of our experienced sales engineers. Typically, they are carried out free of charge for our customers and involves a site visit by the sales engineer. During their visit they will go around the complete compressed air system making note of various details such as compressor type and size, plant running hours, pipework sizes, factory operating hours, on site air applications.

The energy audit is then presented back to the customer on a single piece of paper. The information displayed is on a simple and easy to use ‘traffic light’ report. Items coloured red are key priorities for energy savings, items coloured green are already saving you energy. Between these extremes the more red the colour the more energy that can be saved.

Download a sample report here

HOW DOES AN ENERGY AUDIT SAVE US MONEY?

Based on the principle you can ‘only improve what you measure’ the Energy Audit will give us the data required to accurately measure your compressed air system. From the data file we can model, using state of the art predictive software, what will happen when we change certain parameters, such as system pressure or compressor size.

This give us the ability to quantify, in saved costs, the effect of making specific improvements to your system