What do they do?
While there is enough talk about how the climate is changing and carbon footprints of developing countries are getting out of control, a bevy of professionals have been driving a revolution without the rhetoric. These professionals, called energy conservation specialists, help various companies cut down their energy consumption, saving them money and conserving one of the nation’s most prized resources.
Energy conservation has been developing as a science as well as a profession since the early ’70s and is widely believed to have started in the US. As most of you would be aware, energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is simply converted from one form to the other by the action of various processes.
However, during these processes, some of the energy is converted into forms that are not intended or can’t be utilised. Think of the simple example of an incandescent lightbulb. When electricity passes through the filament, it glows due to the material’s resistance and light is produced. However, due to the same resistance, heat is also produced and that is energy being wasted – both in terms of electricity used and unutilised heat (these also add to cooling costs, one of the biggest components of domestic power usage). One solution is switching to compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), which use less power and heat up less.
Energy conservation specialists do something similar for industrial units though of course it is far more complex. Such a professional would first conduct “a survey of energy consuming areas such as equipment, processes, facilities, utilities etc and arrive at accurate data and information on specific energy consumption”, says Ramesh Bhatia, consultant, Schneider Electric India.
This is the starting point for an energy audit, which determines wastages and excesses that occur in energy consumption in an industry, building or facility.
It also helps to determine the benchmarks for consumption in equipment, process or facility. A necessary component of this activity is to arrive at the ways and means of avoiding such wastages and operate at benchmarks, Bhatia adds.
The follow-through after an audit is energy management. “This requires measurement of energy consumption through instruments and communicating this data to server, which is loaded with appropriate software. Thus, the energy consumption data is available online, in real time without human intervention,” says Bhatia.
What follows is reporting and recommending fixes such as use of passive energy conservation measures such as low consumption devices like CFLs in place of bulbs, star-rated fans, refrigerators and airconditioners, power-factor correction in electrical distribution, improving insulation etc.
“Our government has made rules for compulsory energy audits for big companies and production houses and has also given subsidies to small-scale companies to be able to do it. It will soon become compulsory for small-scale industries in the future,” says Piyush Kakadia, proprietor, Total Energy Consultant, a government certified, Ahmedabad-based energy auditor.
In India, the Energy Conservation Act 2001 governs energy conservation in almost all industry sectors. All energy conservation policies emanate from this Act and are implemented through the Bureau of Energy Efficiency set up by the central government.
