Engaging Small Manufacturing Plants in Strategic Energy Management: Early Lessons Learned from the ENERGY STAR for Industry Partnership and Southside Plant Performance Project

摘要

Engaging small and medium sized industrial plants in efficiency programs focused onrndeveloping plant level Energy Management Systems (EMS) can be challenging. To address thisrnissue, the US EPA’s ENERGY STAR Industrial program (ENERGY STAR) examined differentrnstrategies used by successful corporate energy management programs to build effective plantlevelrnenergy management programs within their companies. Through this process, ENERGYrnSTAR identified an approach that satisfies the desire to find quick energy savings in plants whilernfurthering the corporate objective of building stronger plant energy teams, and establishingrnmanagement mechanisms that support implementation and continuous improvement. Afterrntesting this approach with industrial plants participating in the ENERGY STAR for Industryrnprogram, EPA adapted the approach into a strategic energy management (SEM) type trainingrnprogram. This SEM training program was then tested through a utility energy efficiency programrnand group of small manufacturing facilities in Virginia to test several SEM program designrnquestions, such as recruitment, integration into an existing program offering, and impact.rnThis paper provides an overview of the ENERGY STAR for Industry programrninvolvement in SEM and discusses the strategies identified in successful corporate programs,rnhow these approaches were adopted for the utility SEM training pilot, the results of the project,rnand key lessons learned from the process. The paper concludes that the initial results of thernproject were promising and that additional testing should be undertaken develop the model andrnfurther address SEM and utility program design questions.