It’s Time to Get Motor Efficiency Off the Table and Into Practice

Consuming over 25% of the electricity in the world, motor energy efficiency management must be integral to North America and international sponsored “Best Practices” for demand management by government and NGOs, industry groups, Utilities, ESCOs, and Consultants. “Efficiency is going to be a big focus going forward. I just don’t see the solutions to our biggest energy and environmental challenges without a very big demand-side response. That’s why it’s important to move this way, way up in our priorities. We must get it off the table and into practice.” – U.S. Secretary of Energy, Dr. Earnest Moniz; May 21st, 2013.  But hurdles exist today from management commitment, to organizational accountability and responsibility, to systematic business process integration.

To solve our biggest energy and environmental challenges, efficiency must stay at the center of our focus. It’s true that hurdles exist today including management commitment, to organizational accountability and responsibility, to systematic business process integration.

However, for a moment, let’s just imagine an enterprise where:

• A single notification process bringing together the operational, financial, as well as the energy and environmental intelligence needed to define motor operating, maintenance, and replacement strategies
• Back-end enterprise asset management, energy management, SCADA, and metering and sensor applications don’t require replacement
• Internet of Things (IoT) is the corporate library of available knowledge and intelligence
• Stakeholders can compare performance against inter and intra enterprise peer groups, assess operational and financial efficiency gains, and positively affect a continuing supply chain energy efficiency transformation

Truthfully, you don’t have to imagine this scenario anymore, as all of these things are possible. To address this market opportunity C&I companies, NGOs and government agencies just need to adopt a motor driven-system life-cycle efficiency strategy. This strategy should be based on the systematic convergence of detailed energy information and intelligence with their asset structures to include:

• Selecting the appropriate motor energy efficiency class
• Understanding the existing motor energy performance and benchmark against current high efficient standards
• Prioritizing effort and resources with highest run times and potential impact
• Identifying motor efficiency upgrade opportunities
• Identifying in-field power quality and non-conformity performance
• Determining a repair vs. replace economics
• Managing available spares for efficiency and not emergency repair and uptime
• Applying applicable PdM and CdM maintenance strategies
• Factoring Electric Utility time-of-use and demand marginal cost signals into motor operating strategies

With Motors@Work, you can harness the natural source of energy consumption through the systematic convergence of energy with asset management to optimize efficiency. Motors@Work provides detailed information and intelligence that no one else has and everybody needs.  The intelligence has value by itself but even more when combined with asset management, operating and supplier data. Saving the customer over 15% on their energy spend, reducing their maintenance costs, improving their asset performance. All of which goes right to the bottom line.