Strategies For Energy Management

The two oil crises, in the year 1973 and 1979, were mainly responsible for bringing energy management into the centre phase. As an outcome of such crises, the cost of energy, particularly associating to fossil fuels, rose greatly, and strategies for reducing the energy intensity of industrial operations without affecting the outcome have been developed. As early designs of machines and operations were not energy-proficient, there is a lot of possibility for saving energy in all parts.

In terms of the investments needed, the main strategies for energy management might be classified below three heads:

Low-cost or No-cost Strategies:

Involve good house-keeping measures, avoiding wastage, lugging leaks, fine-tuning tool, and so on.

Moderate-cost Strategies:

Include minor expenditure such as altering designs or operations, substitution of worn-out insulation or tools, and so forth.

High-cost Strategies:

Include major expenses to attain large energy and money savings; like introduction of waste heat recovery devices such as heat exchangers, procedure parameter changes, substitution of obsolete tool by modern ones, and so on.

There are two major approaches to Energy Management at the national level: either the supply of energy has to be raised, or the demand for energy has to be reduced. Such approaches are not autonomous of each other. The demand for energy can be reduced, by discouraging demand via enhancement of prices (i.e., the “belt-tightening” approach), by decreasing energy consumption via improved effectiveness of energy utilization, and via decrease of energy wastes (i.e., the “leak-plugging” approach).