Reducing energy usage will not only lower costs but will also help to improve the sustainability of your operation. Guidewheel helps you to find opportunities to lower energy consumption and costs by tracking sources of energy usage, identifying energy hogs, and managing peak demand. Guidewheel also helps you identify energy waste - energy you’re consuming that is not contributing directly to production. By understanding the true volume and cost of your energy consumption, you can take concrete steps to reduce it.
Key Guidewheel features:
Energy
 | Production
 | Alerts
|
Guidewheel Energy Calculations
How to use them:
Understand the sources of your energy consumption
Navigate to Energy > Calculations
Select “All devices” and choose the date range you’d like to see. We recommend looking at the past week and month to see how energy consumption is trending over time.
This will show you total energy consumption across all of your machines as well as energy consumed by each machine.
To compare energy consumption of specific machines, remove machines by de-selecting them under the graph. This is especially useful in comparing relative energy consumption of the same types of machines.
Manage peak demand
Navigate to Energy > Calculations
Select “All devices” and choose the date range you’d like to see. We recommend looking at the past week and month to see how energy consumption is trending over time.
View data by day and by shift to identify periods of peak consumption.
Determine if production schedules can be changed to even out energy consumption. For example, could you stagger breaks and lunches to spread energy-intensive start-ups throughout the day? Could you run energy-intensive machines for fewer hours each day to lower peak demand?
Consider turning down non-crucial machines when they near their max power level.
Identify and eliminate energy waste
Navigate to the Trends page.
Select Table. Select Metric: “Idle”. Click on “Average” so that the machines are sort by highest to lowest idle time.
Identify the machines with the longest idle times. These are times when machines are drawing energy but not producing, causing energy waste. Determine the source of long idle times and whether machines can be shut down during those periods to conserve energy.
Look at power draw on weekends and periods when machines are not running to determine if they’re still drawing power when turned off. If possible, consider shutting off power at the breaker on weekends to eliminate this source of energy waste.
Track and manage energy intensity by machine and SKU
Note - this feature requires a Premium tier subscription. If you’d like to get access to this feature, contact us at [email protected].
Navigate to the Production page.
Select the data you’d like to see using the filters at the top of the page. You can filter data by date, device, product, shift, tag, supervisor, operator or manager. To add any of these filters click “Add Filters” at the top right corner of the page and select the filters you’d like to use.
Once you have your filtered list, click into an entry to see the details. Look for the Energy tile which showcases the energy intensity per unit built and total energy consumed during that production run.
Compare energy consumption of entries on the list to identify those with the highest consumption. Determine which variables explain the difference. For example, if two machines on the list were running the same product but one consumed more energy, determine if that machine needs maintenance or if it’s simply more energy-intensive to run.
Consider running most energy-efficient machines before running the less energy-efficient ones.