Five ways to reduce compressed air energy consumption

03 January, 2023

4 – Develop maintenance, engineering and operators’ energy reduction skills Involve your team in analysing which machines are using the most energy, what runs efficiently or not. Explain how they can contribute to profitability – and integrate it within an incentive scheme.

Use skills gap analysis as a regular tool to consider how you can equip your people with the skills to become self-sufficient in spotting and solving issues such as leakage in compressed air systems. An external consultant such as Festo Didactic is often invaluable in supporting this process and can help you to develop an appropriate skills and training programme, as well as identifying key performance indicators to measure the return on investment and sustain progress over time.

5 – Utilise machine learning (AI) for energy management

The collection of data is key to sustaining energy efficiency and cost reduction: however, it requires analysis and proposed actions to be truly effective.

An AI platform can be ‘trained’ to analyse the energy data from every connected device. This saves a lot of rigid programming costs, making defect analysis quicker and simpler. It can also incorporate standard tools, such as peak consumption identification and derive predictive modelling, so the data can be used to model load off-setting and staggered operations. The Festo AX platform is one such example.

AI learning requires experts to train the system and to utilise the best combination of algorithms to recognise relevant anomalies, but the benefits of continuous 24/7 monitoring and data driven solutions to energy and cost reduction are compelling.

For more advice, watch the webinar on demand ‘Choosing your approach to reduce compressed air energy consumption in production’ at: www.festo.co.uk/energywebinar

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