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Exele TopView assists Flakeboard in
Energy Savings
Flakeboard Co. Ltd. is an
industry leader in the production of quality composite wood panels.
Using lumber
industry by-products and under-utilized wood species once landfilled or burned
as waste by forestry operators or sawmills,
Flakeboard manufactures a variety of particleboard, medium density
fibreboard (MDF) and FIBREX® thin high density MDF.
Flakeboard needed
a system to facilitate the analysis and allocation of energy costs for each
mill. They turned to their Electrical Systems Coordinator, Pat Burke, whose job
included Energy Management for the whole Flakeboard Corporation. “We knew how
much we were spending on energy overall, but it was deemed important to be able
to understand the breakdown of the energy used by each of the mill’s production
lines to determine a cost per unit.” said Burke.
Flakeboard
decided to implement a long-term energy-savings program. This involved an
Energy audit, implementation design, and the use of Energy Management software
which includes Exele TopView for real-time monitoring and notification.
Audit
The first step
was an Energy Management Information System (EMIS) Audit. The Audit was
necessary to determine the potential energy savings and to estimate the funds
required to implement a full EMIS. That audit revealed that $1 million in energy
savings could be achieved over a 3 year evaluation period and this was a key
factor in getting management’s approval to move forward.
Implementation
Using the data
from the EMIS Audit an EMIS implementation plan was developed which included: a
process to establish baseline data, selecting the appropriate meters for
acquisition of energy usage data and development of a software specification for
monitoring and employee training programs.
Flakeboard’s EMIS
used energy account centers (EACs). Each of their 120 energy account centers
includes energy-using (electricity, oil, water, compressed air) production
processes at each of the mill’s various processing and finishing lines where
meaningful energy use is concentrated.
Forty Electrical
meters were added as well as meters for oil, gas, water and compressed air at
the St Stephen Site. The energy meters data is combined with production rates,
temperatures, and other significant system variables to enable the EMIS software
to calculate the performance of each energy account center to target.
Data Analysis
& Reporting
Incorporating all
of the production, environmental and metered data together is RtEMIS from
RtTECH Software, Inc. The software built to the specifications developed in
Flakeboard’s implementation plan shows the detailed energy targets for each of
the mill line’s EACs in near “Real Time” and identifies savings and losses in
both dollars and energy units.
The RtEMIS
software is used to show the day-to-day energy consumption and the percentage of
the target reached as well as the cost and cumulative savings.
Verifying that
energy usage data is being communicated is critical to the calculations and
historical analysis. “One of the major factors in choosing the RtEMIS system
over the others that we looked at was their ability to monitor input data” said
Burke. “The other systems could go ‘flatline’ for hours or days without anyone
ever knowing that they stopped tracking usage.” The RtEMIS software
incorporated EXELE
TopView, a data monitoring and notification software package capable of
monitoring the data flow from all the various meters and other sources. TopView
interfaces directly with the energy and process data and notifies the
appropriate personnel if it detects any abnormalities, such as a non-functioning
meter, in the data being transmitted.
TopView also
handles the reporting functions. Each morning the system automatically sends a
status report on all communication devices. Additionally each HMI screen in the
facility receives messages when a process has exceeded their preset threshold.
Messages are also emailed to the appropriate managers.
Results
The system
immediately identified opportunities where fans, compressed air and lighting
systems were left on even when the production wasn’t running. The staff has
become more aware of the potential energy savings and has changed their work
habits as a result.
Each production
line now has energy target levels set for full production and zero production,
or idle, status and usage is measured against these targets. Status reports on
peak levels for each energy account center illustrate the reduction in energy
consumption and allow for new, lower targets to be set as energy saving are
realized.
Flakeboard has
experienced a savings in energy costs of $260,000 in a 12 month period and
continues to work to improve efficiencies. Flakeboard was recently recognized
for their efforts in energy conservation at the biennial Energy Conference
co-hosted by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). At their conference, the
Canadian Industry Program for Energy Conservation (CIPEC) honored Flakeboard
with the
CIPEC Leadership Award for making a significant and innovative contribution
to energy efficiency in the monitoring and targeting category.
In a recent
announcement congratulating Pat Burke on his efforts towards receiving this
award, Flakeboard President, Kelly Sholbolt noted that he would be looking to
Burke to roll out this ‘valuable tool’ across their other plants.
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