Second only to crude oil, electrical power is typically one of the highest production costs and key elements in the refining business. In the extremely competitive petrochemical industry, products are produced 24 hours/day - 7 days/week and pumped directly into the market without an inventory buffer. Unscheduled interruptions or disturbances which affect process equipment can lead to millions of dollars in lost production and electrical equipment if not managed properly. Therefore, the continuous supply of high quality power is essential to survival in the refining industry. This paper describes one west coast Refinery's success in proactively managing 110MW of power consumption with their PowerLogic power monitoring and control system that paid for itself in less than one year after it was fully commissioned.

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Installation drives energy conservation and results in significant overall energy consumption cost savings

Less than a year after global power and automation leader Schneider Electric launched a new Enterprise Energy Management (EEM) solution designed to facilitate smart monitoring of energy usage to drive conservation initiatives leading to cost savings, one end user, U.S. auto-maker Ford Motor Company, has reported positive results.

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Just like every other industrial enterprise, the Hershey Company's candy manufacturing plant in Stuarts Draft, VA, needs electrical power. Unlike many other enterprises, plant management has taken a proactive approach to its power usage. In the late 1990s, due to a plant expansion, Hershey's corporate engineering arm decided to bring on a power monitoring and control system. Since then, the benefits of that decision,utilizing Square D Powerlogic products from Schneider Electric, have gone far beyond analysis of power usage and quality and a better understanding of how the electrical distribution system is functioning at any given time.

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Many of the nation's larger campuses in operation today include their own water treatment plants and power plants. Supplying power to these campuses has become a huge endeavor. 

To meet demand at Kent State, the university recently built a new power plant and is updating its distribution systems on campus. Part of bringing the new Power Plant online, was updating the distribution system from a 5KV system to a 15KV system. 

The man charged with overseeing the campus' power is Tom Dunn, the Associate Director of Energy. He's been with Kent State for over 28 years. "By choice, we maintain a minimum import from the utility," says Dunn. "In the summer, it increases a little and we produce 80-85 percent of our own power and import 20 percent " but for the most part we're pretty self-sufficient." Even before the new Power Plant, a more robust power distribution system needed to be in place, and the need for an improved power monitoring system was identified.

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Most probably wouldn’t consider a ski resort a particularly big consumer of energy. But depending on the weather of a given season – particularly related to snowfall – it can become just that very quickly.

Bear Creek Mountain Resort & Conference Center is located on more than 330 acres in scenic Berks County, Penn. In the winter, the resort features skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing, along with other winter activities. In the summer, it’s ideal for hiking, biking, fishing and boating. For skiing – the backbone of the business – the resort features 21 trails and seven ski lifts.

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A leading real estate investment trust manages more than 60 office properties across seven major U.S. cities, and it has a portfolio that includes a prestigious 50-storey building in downtown Manhattan. The property manager wanted to improve the way energy was used and conserved within the building, find a cost-effective way of tracking actual utility usage by each tenant, and do so without adding significant overhead in meter reading or other administrative costs.

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West Coast Food Corporation Energizes Its Bottom Line

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The idea of "critical power" has no more important application than in the healthcare industry. With sensitive equipment that demands extreme levels of power quality to operate correctly, even a momentary lapse in power quality - or even worse - a power system failure, can result in a tragic event. Patients take for granted that when you check into a hospital, the lights won't suddenly turn off just as the surgeon is preparing to perform a delicate maneuver. Keeping power issues under wraps is no small task even at a small medical center, but it's especially demanding when you're one of the nation's largest healthcare facilities. Beaumont Hospital started in 1955 as a single 238-bed hospital suited to serve a small community in Royal Oak, Mich., and has grown into a two-hospital regional medical center, with outpatient locations throughout metro Detroit. In fact, the Royal Oak hospital is now a 1,061-bed tertiary care, teaching, research and referral hospital that is now the largest inpatient hospital in the country for inpatient volume and second for surgeries performed. Its medical staff includes more than 2,400 physicians representing more than 91 medical and surgical specialties. The Royal Oak facility is not only large in volume, scope and scale, but a heavyweight in terms of influence and reputation. It?s a regular industry award winner, and is repeatedly named on best hospital lists, such as the annual U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals list. And Beaumont Hospital continues to grow and rapidly expand its campus. But with this growth comes more demanding energy and power requirements and a significant staff to keep it running. In 1997, Beaumont brought in Optim, a company specializing in providing consulting and management services exclusively to hospitals and the healthcare industry for construction, technology and facilities programs, to provide energy efficient buildings and systems for the hospital.

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When Mercedes-Benz USA International (MBUSI) began building a sophisticated plant to manufacture its M-Class sport utility vehicle, the company was determined to find an equally sophisticated system for monitoring and troubleshooting power quality problems, minimizing downtime, and reducing energy costs. The system they got from Square D paid for itself in two years ? one year ahead of schedule.

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Market growth and frequent product innovations were forcing the facility personnel at Smith and Nephew's Memphis plant to struggle to keep up with the demand for changes in the manufacturing processes. Without a good monitoring system to provide an accurate picture of loading, electricians struggled to determine if particular circuits could handle new loads. After installing a PowerLogic system, the staff soon had accurate peak demand data that allowed them to add new loads to existing circuits and avoid a $2 million expansion.

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