Why energy efficiency? Productivity

Whether it’s product quality, reducing production downtime or helping your staff work better, energy efficiency improvements to equipment and processes can often boost your overall productivity, too. Here are just a few ways energy efficiency translates into a better business proposition – and cost savings beyond the electricity bill.

Reduce wear and tear

Using less energy often means your equipment doesn’t have to work as hard, which reduces overall wear and tear. Equipment will last longer, so you can get more out of your capital investments before you need to replace them.

For example, adding controls to equipment can vastly reduce their “on” times so the equipment is only used when it is needed. Chesswood Arena in Toronto did just this by adding controls to the refrigeration pumps it uses to maintain ice surfaces. Now, the equipment is only operated when conditions require it, taking it from running 24 hours a day to just 12 to 16 hours a day. The ice can still be at its coldest for game time, but can be maintained at a warmer temperature during off-hours.

Cut your downtime

It’s simple. Less wear and tear means less maintenance, and that means less downtime. This is especially true for motor-driven pumps and equipment. “In that case, efficiency directly relates to reliability,” says energy consultant Stephen Dixon.

He points to one example of a municipality that suffered a refrigeration failure at its local arena because of an aging compressor that was operating beyond its service life – ahead of a major international hockey tournament. “New equipment would have been significantly more efficient and would be far less likely to fail a week before such an important event,” Dixon says.

Even energy-efficient LED lighting can reduce downtime. Traditional lighting systems often take time to warm up before production can begin. Lear Corporation’s facility in Ajax switched out its T8 fluorescents to LEDs with great results. “The new bulbs are great because they turn on instantly,” says Luke Carson, the facility’s engineering manager. “Before, any time we needed to restart the plant, we’d have to wait for the lights to warm up for five to 10 minutes. That was a frustrating and costly delay to our operation. But now the lights turn on instantly, with no delay.”

At Ropak Packaging in Oakville, the problem of slow ramp-up times for lighting was particularly acute. Most of the facility was lit by inefficient and high-cost lights that were never turned off, since they took too long to come back on. “We were basically waiting in the dark for them to start back up again and get back to work, so we just started leaving them on,” says Don DiFlorio, a project manager at Ropak.

Upgrading lighting to longer-lasting LEDs also means staff can spend less time on maintenance.

Whenever you do need to upgrade equipment, be sure to choose the most energy-efficient model possible, and you’ll find that planned and unplanned maintenance times will vastly improve.