Most manufacturers and OEMs are under pressure to increase productivity while reducing energy use and environmental impact. It’s a difficult position to be in when they are running energy-intensive industrial machinery that is consuming high power even when idle. To better meet efficiency and sustainability goals, operators need the best possible visibility into their facilities’ energy use to address waste and inefficiencies.
Enter Emerson’s new Energy Manager solution launched at Pack Expo International 2024 in Chicago. This pre-engineered hardware and software offering is designed to simplify industrial electricity monitoring with quick setup and intuitive operation. Ready out of the box, Energy Manager monitors asset energy use in real time, allowing manufacturers to gain deeper insight into energy consumption and operating costs, lowering carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and maximize energy and operational efficiency.
Also on display at the show was Emerson’s Compressed Air Manager, which provides visualization and benchmarking for compressed air and gas consumption for a machine, production line, or across multiple sites. The monitoring app comes pre-installed on an edge device and continuously monitors and analyzes data coming from sensors, transforming the information into KPIs that operators can use to see consumption trends, costs, benchmarks, and CO2 impact.
The Energy Manager can be paired with the Compressed Air Manager to provide a streamlined view of energy costs and compressed air usage of machines across a production line, factory, and site.
“In a typical production facility, energy and air are the utilities that are most used,” said Nils Beckmann, Emerson’s global director, engineering intelligent automation & solutions, during an interview with Packaging OEM at Pack Expo. “You can buy from us the sensors that are needed to get the data out, and then we also bring the data back to a cabinet where we have the edge devices, computing power, power supplies, and network switches. So what we offer is more of less the full package.”
Emerson’s Energy Manager provides energy measurements in real time, allowing plant managers to quickly view detailed values and see savings opportunities, such as idle consumption and peak loads. The software’s dashboard provides asset-specific energy use, associated costs and CO2 emissions for up to 10 end points (expandable to 50 endpoints with a license).
This level of visibility provides an overview of the facility that can also dig deeper into specific points to optimize machine schedules during off-peak hours, reducing electricity use across the plant floor and significantly lowering overall utility costs.
According to Emerson, most facilities can reduce energy waste up to 10-30% and carbon emissions by up to 15-30%.
“Reliable, accurate monitoring of energy costs and emissions is becoming invaluable to organizations,” said Eugenio Silva, intelligent automation product manager with Emerson’s discrete automation business. “Our new Energy Manager solution gives operators, facility managers and corporate sustainability teams greater visibility and deeper understanding of energy consumption and operating costs at all times. This can better position companies to track and reach targets, comply with regulations, and reliably reduce environmental impact.”
