Mysterious Energy Consumption and £40,000 Saving | A Case Study
The Problem
Tom Malone (technical manager) had a hunch it was something to do with the electricity supply, but the big bosses from the utility company were not about to play ball. They considered it an ideal opportunity to cash in on County’s troubles.
Having sent one of their henchmen down to case the joint the conclusion they came to was predictably threatening: “Its your fault so pay us £46,000 to fix it or else.”
Something need to be done…
The Approach
Tom needed help, so he called in the ‘energy detectives’ from BEST. We installed our real-time energy management system Eniscope and it immediately uncovered the brutal truth. The utility company had been trying to get away with supplying ludicrously low-voltage electricity.
In fact, Eniscope revealed the supply voltage had sometimes plummeted to as low as 212V – well beneath the minimum regulations. The cause of the equipment failure had now been exposed and Malone was vindicated!
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"Its your fault so pay us £46,000 to fix it or else."
The Results
The power company had been caught red-handed and faced with Eniscope’s indisputable evidence, they were humiliated into revising their quote to £6000 — a massive £40,000 saving.
The team at BEST however, had given Malone a new found belief and he was now confident he could get the upgrade for FREE. What’s more, he had eliminated the source of his major downtime and maintenance costs, which represented another massive saving.
But the investigation wasn’t over yet. Having cracked one case with the aid of Eniscope, Malone was eager to get to the bottom of another mystery that had been playing on his mind. County Confectionery’s energy bill had always been higher than he thought it should be but he could never put his finger on the puzzling cause of his excessive consumption. Within 4 weeks Eniscope had traced all the clues and tracked down the culprit! What was it, we hear you ask?
Eniscope’s historical data highlighted an unusually high base-load on a specific phase within the building. A closer look at the information revealed that almost all of the load 21kW – was coming from the same place… an electrical heating system that was used to keep the chocolate in liquid form to assist the manufacturing process. Bingo!
Case closed
Eniscope quickly got to the bottom of Country Confectionery's energy mystery.