ENERGY SAVING
Remotely making maintenance efficient
James Ward, operations director at Star Refrigeration examines the benefits of good plant maintenance and remote monitoring technology.
T
he past two decades have seen a growing commitment across all sectors of UK business and industry to reduce electrical energy consumption to help tackle climate change. In March 2020 the government announced an extension to the Climate Change Agreement scheme, increasing decarbonisation ambitions and setting energy efficiency targets for UK business and industry. The announcement coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. The nationwide food and drink supply chain immediately faced continued pressure to meet the additional capacity required to feed the nation. With an increase in production and throughput since the start of the first lockdown in March 2020, many cold chain companies saw a significant rise in energy usage, due to greater demand on refrigeration systems. In some sectors of the refrigeration industry, such as cold storage and distribution, the cooling system accounts for 70-80% of a temperature controlled facility’s energy bill. Star Refrigeration estimates that many large refrigeration plants in the cold chain industry are currently running with up to 30% inefficiency. Refrigeration engineering companies help operators of large cooling systems to achieve substantial energy savings.
Establishing an ongoing programme of proactive and predictive planned preventative maintenance (PPM) using
16 January 2021
the latest remote monitoring technology helps end users to increase efficiency, save energy and cut costs. Plant maintenance was a largely reactive service when Star was established over 50 years ago. Beyond annual safety and compliance checks, for many years refrigeration engineers only attended site to respond to plant faults and breakdowns. Without ongoing PPM, customers today increase the risk of unplanned downtime due to faults and poor running conditions. Inefficient operation, plant repair and downtime creates additional costs and can have a significant detrimental effect on business.
Over the past two decades, PPM has become
widespread, with refrigeration engineering firms delivering a schedule of activities to boost system resilience. Today PPM has evolved into a high tech and highly proactive aftercare service, enabling plant operators to make significant energy savings, amounting to between 10 and 30% on electricity costs. For operators of large cooling systems, this often represents a cost saving of hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. Remote monitoring technology lies at the heart of
modern refrigeration aftercare services, helping businesses to increase efficiency and save energy by focusing on plant performance optimisation and proactive maintenance. Without ongoing remote monitoring it is very difficult to optimise equipment performance and maximise efficiency,
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