Industrial Utility Efficiency

Energy Manager

20 Years of Case Studies: Plants Sharing Best Practices

Edited by Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, Compressed Air Best Practices® 

For 20 years, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine has published articles focused on helping manufacturers reduce power demand, lower water consumption, and improve the performance of compressed air, cooling, blower and industrial vacuum systems. In this article, we highlight a sampling of those stories across the following industries:

  • Plastics and Packaging
  • Food and Beverage
  • Automotive and Transportation
  • Cement, Building Materials, and Mining
  • Metals, Pulp, and Paper
  • Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, and Research
  • Wastewater Treatment
     
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Don’t Skip the Most Important Meeting of Your Energy Project

By John Molnar, Rogers Machinery Company

In many parts of the country—and especially the Pacific Northwest—interest has surged in completing energy-saving compressed air system upgrades. The financial assistance from incentive programs, combined with the falling costs of efficiency-increasing technology, has made these projects very attractive to all those involved. The benefits for society, power companies and customers are immense.
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Innovative Energy Program Assessments at Darigold

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Imagine a dairy farm. Do pictures of idyllic pastures populated by grazing, happy cows come to mind? What about the not-so-idyllic image of farmers milking cows by hand? Modern dairy farms work a little differently. Darigold, a farmer-owned dairy co-op located in the Pacific Northwest, has the happy cows, but production is more sophisticated. The company has eleven state-of-the-art production facilities churning out high-quality dairy products at mind-boggling rates. Milk, for instance, is produced to the tune of 2.6 million gallons per day. To maintain efficient production at scale, Darigold also has an innovative energy management program in place.
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Nissan Curbs Compressed Air to Achieve Energy Savings

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Nissan North America operates on a massive scale. The company’s powertrain assembly plant in Decherd, Tennessee, alone encompasses 1.1 million square feet, and manufactures engines for 14 different vehicles. The facility also handles crankshaft forgings, cylinder block castings, and other machining applications. Over the course of one year, the powertrain plant churns out approximately 1.4 million engines, an equal number of crankshaft forgings, and 456,000 cylinder block castings.
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CalPortland Energy Management Earns Another ENERGY STAR Award

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Making cement is an energy-intensive process. In a cement plant, the electrical energy load can reach up to 25 MW, consuming 185 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually. In addition, the plant consumes a large amount of coal and natural gas. CalPortland is an enormous producer of cement, concrete, aggregates and asphalt. With 80 facilities spanning five states across the western U.S., one might logically assume that CalPortland consumes a lot of energy.
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Energy Management at Intertape Polymer Group

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine.

Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Michael Jones, Corporate Energy Team Leader, from Intertape Polymer Group (IPG).   Intertape Polymer Group (IPG) is a manufacturer of tapes, films, woven fabrics, and complementary packaging systems for industrial and consumer use. The company operates 10 production plants and employs approximately 1,800 people. IPG has developed a robust energy management program by using ENERGY STAR energy management tools and actively participating in the ENERGY STAR partnership. IPG is receiving ENERGY STAR recognition for the growth of its energy program and leadership as a medium-sized manufacturer.
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Global Energy Management at Corning

Compressed Air Best Practices® interviewed Patrick Jackson, Director of Global Energy Management.

This is our first time receiving the award. We were hopeful we would receive it because we thought we achieved 23 out of the 23 attributes defined by the guidelines. Additionally, since the program was launched, GEM’s management practices have saved Corning more than \$328 million in cumulative energy costs.  
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ENERGY STAR® Sustains Excellence

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The ENERGY STAR Awards are EPA’s highest honors for superior energy efficiency, and several award categories exist. EPA’s ENERGY STAR Industrial Partners could receive either Sustained Excellence or Partner of the Year in the Energy Management category. These awards go to organizations for adopting a continuous energy management strategy across the organization’s entire portfolio of buildings and plants and for communicating the value of ENERGY STAR and energy management broadly.
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Sustainable Productivity at Atlas Copco

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The story of Atlas Copco’s 140-year commitment to innovation. When thinking about innovation during the past century, the mind immediately wanders to consumer-facing brands that make products that are experienced by users – like a mobile computer and videophone that fits in our hands or the technology applications through which almost all modern business is conducted.
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Measuring Energy Savings at Verallia

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Compressed Air Best Practices interviewed Gregory Rhames, Asset Reliability Manager/Energy Manager at Verallia. As background, Verallia is the packaging division of Saint-Gobain. Verallia employs 15,500 people globally and makes about 25 billion glass bottles and jars each year. We employ 350 people at Madera where we produce about 1 million wine, champagne and sake bottles per day.
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Corporate Sustainability Programs

Sustainable Operations in Practice at Klöckner Pentaplast
In most of our factories, we have installed detailed energy monitoring systems at multiple points
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