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Volvo Penta is now able to analyze its energy consumption in an entirely new way, which will help it in its efforts to achieve tough energy targets. Instead of producing piles of charts, graphs and reports, Infracontrol helped visualise energy consumption in a new, simpler way.
Jens Lauridsen, environmental coordinator at Volvo Penta, has a simple new tool to help him in his work.
– Now I can easily see if we have abnormally high consumption somewhere and we can quickly take measures that have great benefit, he says, adding. We have already discovered several ‘energy thieves’ and put a stop to them.
We all need to conserve energy
Without a doubt we consume a lot of energy, and we all agree we must work together to reduce our impact on the climate. But where do we use energy unnecessarily? Where will streamlining have the most benefit? Infracontrol Online gathers information on all energy consumers and visualises energy consumption in an entirely new way.
In major installations like tunnels or industries there is a lot of equipment that consumes energy. Energy consumers are often not metered individually but are lumped together on one bill.
By implementing automatic metering for as many consumers as possible and complementing this information with manually entered values, a great deal of important information can be gathered.
But a lot of information can in and of itself make it difficult to analyse connections and find causes
so at Infracontrol Online we have created an application that presents the energy consumption of various installation parts and processes in a clear, easy-to-read manner.
Simple follow-up
Staff can quickly get to grips with the situation with the aid of simple, flexible functions and find places where measures should be taken. Once done they have a great tool for following up results, filing reports and documenting improvements. The solution is centered on Infracontrol Online, which collects meter readings from a factory’s various energy consumers. Values are collated and grouped according to function or process and are presented in a user-friendly web interface. Simple bar charts allow the user to follow and compare energy consumption in a factory around the clock.
– Now we are easily able to follow up our energy saving initiatives in a completely different way than before,” says Jens Lauridsen. Because it’s so easy to demonstrate connections it has also become a teaching aid in spreading knowledge and getting everyone to take part in our efforts to reduce our environmental impact.
Great results
Major consumers bring opportunities for major savings. Improved knowledge of energy consumption enables us to change procedures and working methods in our operation so that energy consumption is quickly reduced. This also means that there are major sums of money to save. Current estimations show that the solution has contributed savings equivalent to around SEK 1 million per year so far.
Simplicity is the key to success
Infracontrol has long experience of making things simple with graphical interfaces.
– The challenge lies in keeping things simple, says Infracontrol CEO Johan Höglund. Anyone can gather a bunch of values and produce hundreds of charts, but we need to ask what we gain from it, or we won’t be able to see the wood for the trees. We get to see what we need to see by peeling away all the unnecessary information to create a visual experience. Less is more.
