Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management, recently conducted an Energy Efficiency project in one of its global factories in Ringsted, Denmark. By measuring, monitoring and analysing the power supply it became obvious where to focus the effort to save energy. In Ringsted the use of power was reduced by 8 pct – equivalent of one month’s use of power.

- Simply understanding where and how you use energy can yield up to 10 % savings without any large capital investments, says Heine Knudsen, Schneider Electric, and continues: - By modernising existing buildings with intelligent building solutions it is possible to obtain an additional 20% savings.

New standards on the building market

- Raising prices on energy resources, a higher focus on environmental legislation and tightened government rules will by the year 2012 make it unimaginable to plan industrial building projects without intelligent building installations, Heine Knudsen boldly predicts.

The high focus from all levels of society makes it necessary for businesses and public institutions to take actions on energy efficiency. Both future building projects and existing buildings will need to optimise the use of energy to meet the tightened demands – both by intelligent installation systems and by changing procedures and behaviour.

The Ringsted factory was built in 2000 and was already equipped with a modern, intelligent installation system to control the light, ventilation and heating systems. Intelligent technologies and movement sensors controlling the light intensity can for example turn off the light when there is no activity in a given room.

In factories with less modern lighting technologies an Energy Efficiency project would probably reveal total savings of up to 30%, Schneider Electric’s global experiences show. Just by optimising the existing buildings and installations systems it is possible to save large amounts of energy and reduce the CO2 emission.