Post: Closing the Gap Between Industry & Energy

Closing the Gap Between Industry & Energy

GridBeyond partners with industrial and commercial federations to break down the barrier to energy opportunities, and to build the bridge more effectively between industry and energy related third parties.

“A consultative approach is necessary when it comes to integrating energy technology” Phelan explained. “Energy services and technology providers are often regarded as ‘outsiders’, however we are changing the tide on that. We know what’s happening in industries, we know what’s important to each industrial sector, and we know how we can best service these businesses through continued dialogue and analysis.”

GridBeyond is a member of numerous industry federations globally, including PITA and TAPPI (both paper industry federations), AFS for metal foundries, The Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA), MPA (for aggregates industries), NEPIC (industrial cluster), and the Chemical Industry Association (CIA), to name a few. The list is continually growing.

Mark Davis, Managing Director for UK & Ireland at GridBeyond, weighed in on the topic “The information we glean from our relationships with federations and industrial customers is invaluable. We use it to benchmark analytics, develop our product portfolio, work on behalf of industry with grid operators, understand how we can best help industrial sites to maximise the potential in their energy flexibility, and help develop and enhance overall energy strategy for industrial sites.”

“One example of how we’ve applied our knowledge in a very front-and-centre visible way is through the new Energy Opportunity Calculator. It’s through our knowledge of flexibility levels, and understanding which processes can and cannot be tampered with, along with keeping our finger on the pulse of regulations affecting certain energy intensive industries, that makes a tool like this possible.”

The Energy Opportunity Calculator draws on GridBeyond’s extensive experience in the energy markets and engineering knowledge of site assets and inherent flexibility. Energy users simply enter three pieces of information: location, industry and electricity consumption (in MW, kWh, MWh or electricity spend), and the output is the financial benefits their site could gain access to.

The result is split into revenues and savings, and uses the typical percentage of flexibility for the user’s industry, the typical services and programmes available to that industry, and the values of those programmes to generate the results.

According to EIA, “the industrial sector uses more delivered energy than any other end-use sector, consuming about 54% of the world’s total delivered energy”, which is why GridBeyond’s CEO is concerned to find that “from an end user’s perspective, the visibility of a site’s value in the energy markets, and the areas they can reduce impact and help the system, is often clouded. Service providers talk extensively about value per MW, but don’t necessarily have the knowledge of application to ascertain the amount of flexibility actually available within particular industries and the breadth of services both within and outside of DSR.”

Mike Lancaster, head of Regional Affairs at the Chemical Industry Association (CIA) explained, “The chemical sector is highly energy intensive and is continuously striving to become more energy efficient. By working with solution providers like GridBeyond we can both reduce the carbon footprint and reduce the energy costs for the sector.’’

Whilst Ben Yates, Vice President at the American Foundry Society (AFS), supported that conclusion in relation to foundries by commenting that “Foundries are often looking for innovative and efficient was to improve their operations and I’m sure many will be interested in learning about the GridBeyond platform for energy management and sustainability.”

GridBeyond’s Energy Opportunity calculator is available to use for free online. Access the calculator now via this link.