Plant Power Monitoring System

[ghamsa]

How can I monitor the power (electricity) consumption in a processing plant? Or is there an index that would tell if the power (electricity) is being consumped effeciently.

Many thanks

 

[TD2K]

You haven't provided much detail what you are asking about so I'll throw out a couple of comments. Energy efficiency can be described as:

Reactive power versus the actual kWh you are consuming (your power factor). Utilities can charge you a premium for non unity power factors. Capacitor banks are typically used to correct power factors but you would need to look at your contract and actual power factor to see if it is economical to fix this.

Electrical use in the plant. I would think you need to do an audit, identify where you are using electricity and see where you could have savings. Compressed air leaks, electrically driven pumps with high dPs across control valves, etc all will increase energy consumption. Items like higher efficiency lighting, turning off lighting, etc.

As far as an 'index', you would need to supply us what type of plant, the size, location, etc and perhaps someone can give you some guidelines what your energy consumption should be.

 

[ghamsa]

Thanks, TD2K for stopping by

In our refinery we have an electrical power consumption index as follows:
We divide total incoming feed flowrate in (MBD) by the electrical power consumption in (KWD) to come up with an index. This indexs shows how we are using the electrical power effeciently vs. feed received.

I am looking for something like this yet more meaningful. The MBD/KWD index is not that much meangful.

Thanks

 

[tinfoil]

I gather you are trying to measure your electrical consumption per unit of production.

One thing to bear in mind is that you are going to have some somewhat constant 'base' electrical consumption no matter how little you are producing (from such things as lights, computers, etc). It would be useful to determine what THAT is, and deduct it from your electrical consumption prior to calculating your index.