Harnessing Smart Sensor Technology for Industrial Energy Efficiency- Making Process-Specific Efficiency Projects Cost Effective with a Broadly Configurable, Network-Enabled Monitoring Tool

To improve monitoring technology often re-quired by industrial energy efficiency projects, we have developed a set of power and process monitoring tools based on the IEEE 1451.2 smart sensor interface standard. These tools enable a wide-range of industrial facilities to monitor electricity use and identify opportunities for savings. Our efforts have focused on creating an 'off-the-shelf' monitoring solution that can be configured for a wide range of sensors to monitor machine and process parameters in conjunction with electrical power usage. Using these tools, we have identified energy savings opportunities for several manufacturing processes by monitoring and analyzing real-time, process-related information in conjunction with electric power consumption data. Specifically, we have found that some energy savings opportunities are only apparent after combining synchronously-collected, machine and process information with power-use profiles. In this paper we discuss examples of applying this approach to various manufacturing processes from different product sectors