Digital Services Drive Better Energy-Efficiency Decisions
ABB is a Business Reporter client.
Digitally connected industrial electric motors provide rich data that helps operators optimize energy-efficiency investments.
Achieving carbon neutrality is one of the biggest challenges faced by the global business community. Improving energy efficiency is an important way to reduce emissions, but business leaders need confidence that they will see a return on investment.
They face three questions: where to target energy-saving initiatives; which actions will produce the best results; and how these actions will impact targets.
One key focus must be improving the efficiency of electrical motion. Around 45% of the world’s electricity is converted into motion by some 300 million motors that power equipment across every sector, from energy, mining, manufacturing and commercial buildings to food production and water. However, many motors are less efficient than they could be, and therefore use more energy, create more CO2 emissions and cost more to run.
Traditionally, operators use energy appraisals to identify motors that are operating inefficiently. However, these require manual data gathering and analysis, and are typically focused on just a few motors.
Fortunately, new technology offers the opportunity to rapidly scale up the capability of energy appraisal services. It uses rich data from digitally connected motors to provide confidence in the business case for energy-efficiency programs and remove the risk from decision-making.
Gathering data from the entire fleet
Thanks to Internet of Things (IoT) technology, it is now possible to identify and quantify the energy-saving potential of all electric motors across an entire operation, whether they’re large, small or hard to access. Digitalization enables data to be gathered from motors and variable speed drives (VSDs) to track key parameters such as motor temperature, vibration and speed.
Insight into the condition of assets enables operators to optimize maintenance and avoid unplanned outages. Gathering additional data also takes decision-making to the next level by revealing the energy-efficiency performance of entire motor-driven systems. Expert analysis can diagnose whether individual motors are oversized or outdated and recommend remedial actions, and calculate the return on investment.
This approach is a significant improvement over the previous method where investments were often allocated on a best-guess basis. In many cases, prior to digitalization, these motors might not have been the most obvious candidates for energy savings. Now, industrial operators can take a tightly targeted approach and focus investment on the individual assets where it will make the biggest difference.
The data may indicate that a midlife upgrade of specific assets has the potential for energy and cost savings. Alternatively, it might identify motors that are oversized and would benefit from a variable speed drive to precisely match the motor speed with the required output.
This methodology is being implemented at a particle physics research center in Switzerland. Cooling is essential to the success of the facility’s experimental program, and its extensive cooling and ventilation system has hundreds of motors powering pumps, fans and compressors. Seeing an opportunity to boost sustainability, the center has initiated a project to identify potential energy savings by analyzing operational data. The resulting insight will also enable it to schedule more efficient maintenance and avoid unplanned downtime.
This is just one example of how digitalization can benefit industry. Businesses in every sector can now use rich data from connected motors to save energy, better target investment and reduce operating costs and CO2 emissions.
Read more about how energy efficiency can be improved: ABB Motion Services—Energy Efficiency and Circularity.
— Adrian Guggisberg, President, ABB Motion Services
This article originally appeared in Business Reporter.
Image: Courtesy of ABB
