Energy efficiency

Renewing your lighting system may not only considerably reduce your energy consumption but also improve ergonomics and safety, reduce your maintenance costs, and lower your waste management costs. If you replace your antiquated lighting system by a new one, depending on where you started, you may save up to 75 per cent in electricity costs for lighting.

Useful tips:

• Install highly efficient electronic control gear to increase both the operating life and light output of your lights.
• Attach reflectors to fluorescent lamps even after installation. This increases the light output considerably. The required illumination can also be accomplished with fewer lights. Turn off the lights you do not need.
• The light intensity can be adjusted to the remaining daylight by means of daylight-controlled lighting. Presence detectors are ideal to turn off the lights after a defined period of time in your hallways, staircases, storage depots, and other less frequented premises.
• Clean lights emit more light. Workspaces close to windows require less artificial light. White walls light up the room.
• Often you will not need ceiling lights, if you have any extra workspace lighting.
• Convert your lighting to LED systems. LEDs require about 80 per cent less electricity than conventional light bulbs.
• If you are still using halogen lamps, please keep in mind that they only stop consuming electricity by fully turning off the transformer.

Do you have a compressed air system? An excellent place to start saving costs by reducing your energy consumption. After all, a compressed-air system may use up about 20 per cent of your overall energy consumption. Save between 5 and 50 per cent of electricity, especially considering that most efficiency measures are usually recouped within two years, which is highly attractive from an economic point of view. 

Useful tips:

• Regularly check your systems for leakages (e.g., walk through your plant and check everything for whistling noises when the plant is not in operation). Leakages lead to a considerable loss in efficiency.
• Adjust your plant to what you actually need. Focus on your short-term or medium-term demand and disregard any long-term planning.
• The right distribution of air pressure enables you to save large amounts of energy.
• Reduce your energy consumption by choosing the right compressor. It is not possible to make a general statement on which compressor is the best to generate air pressure. This does not mean, however, that your choice of compressor does not matter. The various types and designs of compressors are very different in terms of what they can offer, how much they cost, and how much energy they consume.
• Compressed-air systems operate at an efficiency rate of far below 100 per cent. A major part of the consumed energy is “lost” in form of heat, which could also be used for other operational purposes.
• Conceive the connections of your system as part of the overall plant. The greatest power guzzlers are, for example, large cross-section tolerances, more clutches than necessary, and inadequately dimensioned pipe diameters.
• Compressed-air systems may be adjusted to meet your actual needs by means of time switches, which also help to reduce your energy consumption and noise levels.

When it comes to pump systems, energy efficiency measures pay off regardless of your industry or the size of your business. Companies may reduce the energy consumption of their pumps by up to about 30 per cent on average.

Useful tips:

• Good plant design can reduce energy loss.
• Choose the right production process.
• The site of installation as well as correctly tuned process parameters may also help to increase the level of energy efficiency.
• If you wish to increase the efficiency of your pump system, try to reduce the number of points where energy might be lost before it can actually be consumed for the work the system is supposed to do.
• In some pump systems, frequency inverters may be the best way to save energy. A frequency inverter renders the control valve superfluous. Although a frequency inverter might reduce the efficiency of the engine, it increases the efficiency of both pump and pipes by such a degree that the overall system consumes up to 30 per cent less electricity.

When it comes to refrigeration units, there are many ways to reduce your energy consumption. Some measures only require a period of two years to pay off, which makes them highly attractive from an economic point of view.

Useful Tips:

• Minimise your refrigeration demands – an environment of minus 18 degrees requires about 25 per cent less energy than the same setting at minus 23 degrees.
• Process design: a good storage concept leads to shorter periods inside cold-storage facilities and less time with open doors.
• Frozen goods are best thawed in cold-storage rooms.
• As lighting generates heat, it should only be turned as needed inside cold-storage facilities. LEDs or fluorescent lamps offer double the savings potential.
• Turn your cooling equipment off if you do not need it. Cover it to optimise their time to defrost.
• Do you permanently need heat at low temperatures somewhere in close proximity? Then you might consider recovering your waste heat. Compare the potential maximum performance of the various system components at your plant to find any bottlenecks or badly attuned components.

Process air technology generates special air qualities in the course of the production process. Many companies are able to benefit from such efficiency measures after a pay-off period of just two years, making them highly attractive from an economic point of view.

Useful Tips:

• Determine your actual air requirements. This information is essential to know your energy demand for air transport as well as your energy needs and the required size of your air conditioning components.
• Air conditioning is the second major energy consumption factor. The required performance depends on the flow rate as well as the interplay between natural and artificial ventilation. 
• Another key factor in this formula is the question of how intensely the air needs to be conditioned. Your energy consumption for air conditioning may be reduced by using waste heat from the production process or by recovering heat from exhaust air.
• Check whether it would make sense to add a natural ventilation system to your air conditioning for certain periods of the year.

There are many opportunities to implement efficiency measures and save both energy and money in materials handling systems. Almost 100 per cent of all conveyor technology requires electricity for operation. Adequate energy efficiency measures are able to considerably reduce the energy consumption particularly of electric actuators. 

Useful Tips:

• Keep in mind to optimise the entire drivetrain as early as in the planning phase.
• Use correctly dimensioned engines.
• Make sure your system operates at high capacity.­

The energy efficiency of electrically operated systems can be economically improved by 20 to 30 per cent. Well-planned and operated drive systems have more to offer than savings in energy consumption. They may also increase your plant utilisation and improve production quality with lower reject rates.

Useful Tips:

• Reduce losses in the windings to save energy either by increasing the conductor cross-section or by sufficiently improving the winding technique.
• Use an electrical steel sheet with improved magnetic properties to considerably increase energy efficiency.
• Improve the airflow within the motor to save energy.
• Regular maintenance is essential. Well-serviced equipment often requires less energy.
• If you turn off the machines, do not forget to also turn off any ancillary equipment and smaller devices.
• Your energy costs will go down by operating as few major power consumers as possible at the same time. If possible: produce in the low-tariff range.

Energy management helps you to systematically reduce the energy consumption of your operation, thereby also systematically reducing the costs of your business. Energy management is a strategic decision that needs to be both initiated and supported by the company’s management. All business areas need to be involved in the analysis, planning, and implementation of energy management measures to ensure a continuous and systematic improvement process. New objectives need to be defined and realised at regular intervals.

Useful Tips:

• It certainly pays off to coordinate the hold-off times and temperatures of your infrastructure, such as heating, cooling, and water systems.
• Implement efficiency trainings to sharpen the awareness of your employees with regard to energy consumption.
• You might think about instituting an energy saving incentive. A reward system will encourage your employees to better deal with this issue.

• Invest in proper protection from the sun, so your air conditioning systems as well as freezers and refrigerators or cooling shelves can operate more efficiently. Use doors and covers to lock your refrigerators and cooling shelves – this not only reduces your energy consumption but also protects your goods from any fluctuations in temperatureli>
• If you do not need an area or equipment for the presentation of your goods, turn it off. It will pay off. Reheating usually requires less energy than standby operation.
• If you keep the doors to your premises open, turn off any air conditioning systems.
• Eco tip: use the environmentally friendly and non-fossil CO2 as the freezing agent of choice. It is efficient, not toxic, and does not increase the greenhouse effect;
• The warm exhaust air from your cooling units can by recovered by means of heat exchangers to keep your supermarket warm and comfortable.
• If you make use of daylight, you may think about adjusting the intensity of your lighting to the time of day. One such example would be a glass dome in the roof to allow daylight into the sales area.
• LED lamps consume just a fraction of the energy needed for conventional lighting systems.

Everyday office work boasts a lot of potential to save large amounts of energy. Simple changes of our habits often lead to noticeable reductions of energy consumption. Moreover, the efficient use of office equipment plays a considerable role in climate protection.

Tips for your office equipment:

• When you buy new office equipment, choose efficient consumption and performance values both in operation and standby mode. In many cases, a slightly more expensive purchasing price will pay off due to the equipment’s low energy consumption.
• Regularly maintained equipment often requires less energy, as damages seals, clogged filters, or calcifications might increase your energy consumption.
• Make sure you have the right switches, such as in socket boards, to keep your equipment separated from power supply outside of operating hours. .

Tips for your computer:

• Multiple or remote-controlled sockets you can turn off or timer switches can help you to avoid any costs during standby times.
• Turn off your computer or notebook whenever you do not use it.
• Benefit from your computer’s power saving function and configure your power management accordingly. The following settings are recommended: hibernation after 15 minutes. This means that your computer will enter the sleep/hibernating mode after a break of 15 minutes without any activity.
• Turn off the screen even when taking short breaks. If you turn it on again, the picture you see will be just the same as before. Deactivate your screen saver, especially if it is colourful and animated.

Tips for your printer:

• Turn on your workplace printer when you actually need it. 
• • Use a socket board with extra switches or a special control unit to fully separate your printer, scanner, or other devices from the power grid and set your energy consumption to zero. 
• •Save paper!

Tips for your office lighting:

• Use daylight! 
• Turn of your artificial office lighting whenever there is enough daylight.
• Use a desk lamp with an energy-saving bulb, as it requires significantly less energy than standard office ceiling lights.
• Pay attention to generally use energy-saving bulbs in all your office premises. Their energy savings potential is enormous! Replacing classic light bulbs by energy-saving bulbs may reduce the energy consumption of your lighting system by up to 80 or 90 per Cent.
• Install motion sensors in rooms where you do not need permanent lighting. This measure will help you to only have the lighting on when it is actually needed.

Tips for your room climate:

• Temperatures between 20 and 22 degrees Celsius as well as humidity levels between 50 and 60 per cent are ideal conditions for a comfortable room climate.
• In air-conditioned and heated offices: keep your windows and doors closed.
• Keep your rooms well ventilated by opening the windows for short periods and turning off the heating. Tilted windows are inefficient.
• Regularly clean your radiators and make sure they are not blocked or covered to efficiently emit heat.
• Air-conditioning technicians can adjust the system to your actual needs, especially if you know when and how the rooms are used.
• In companies with a high number of customers on site, automatic doors might come in handy to save additional energy.