down for a break, but benefits as well. “Say you’re shutting down for a 15-minute break, and the line has conveyors and robots. They can go to energy save mode, but there are timing factors of shutting down and starting up. You need an orderly start-up automatically for the end of break. Profienergy, with just a little programming in the programmable logic controller, will be able to expedite this process and offer the energy savings to the manufacturer.”

Achieving balance

Sergio Gama, market development director for power control business at supplier Rockwell Automation Inc., in Mequon, Wis., says, “The goal is about helping customers conduct environmentally friendly and productive manufacturing enterprises. We help them achieve a balance of energy awareness, environmental conservation and labor safety in operations. These all support highly productive enterprises. We also are moving into a different area in terms of determining energy usage per unit of product manufactured—in essence allowing energy to become part of the bill of materials of the product.”

Invensys Operations Management, a process systems supplier based in Plano, Texas, is a company still coming together from its components of Invensys Process Systems, Wonderware and Eurotherm. Bill Schiel, industry solution manager for IOM, reports that the company is bringing all the pieces together for customers with consulting teams to help bring in change procedures and equipment, along with the Wonderware tools for monitoring and reporting. “If you only look at the electric bill once a month, how do you know what’s actually influencing cost?” he asks. The closer we can get to real time, the better operations can influence energy reduction.

Finally, Sean Robinson, industry director for food and beverage at suppler GE Intelligent Platforms, in Charlottesville, Va., sums up, “Some see these sustainability programs as part of an overall continuous improvement program. It’s really a triage for finding inefficiencies treated as a cost and opportunity that happens to have significant environmental and societal benefits.”

For more, go online and listen to a podcast interview of Invensys Operations Management Vice President Peter Martin discussing energy management with Automation World Managing Editor Wes Iversen, at www.automationworld.com/podcast-6210.

Related Sidebar - Maintaining Optimum Combustion
To read the article accompanying this story, go to www.automationworld.com/feature-6672.

Subscribe to Automation World's RSS Feeds for Feature Articles