Identifying opportunities to reduce the consumption of energy across mining and processing plants – by David Sterling, Schneider Electric.
Abstract
In addition to meeting government policy on energy efficiency opportunities (EEOs), mining and mineral processing companies are increasing energy efficiency to reduce costs in the current financial conditions. One of the major issues with EEOs is the lack of data available on energy use, and more importantly the energy use linked to production data, that identify energy reduction opportunities.
As well as energy reduction, mining and mineral processing companies often struggle with the prediction of energy use, and are often penalised for under or over forecasting. Once again it is the lack of timely information that makes this prediction difficult.
This paper looks at expanding the use of manufacturing execution systems by integrating with energy solutions. This will provide automatic, timely information, at a granularity that makes it easier to identify EEOs, reduce energy costs, and better predict energy use in a mining and mineral processing operation.
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