Has anybody got any information about potential energy savings from a predictive maintenance program incorporating vibration analysis, motor current and flux analysis and shaft voltage trending. The application in question is building maintenance in a hospital. Many pumps and fans with everything controlled by vfd's.

Thanks,

Danny

Go here and then click on PDF on upper right-hand corner:
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/321580.html
That should take you to a University of Tennessee (sp?) article on Motor Shaft Misalignment Versus Efficiency Analysis

Also attached is a similar article that I downloaded from the Enteract conference articles that used to be available on-line.

I haven't looked at it very closely but I have always thought that the big savings comes in reduced failures and reduced maintenance costs and that energy losses associated with misalignment and unbalance are usually pretty small in comparison.

Enteract97_Allman_MisalignmentHeat.pdf (515 Kb, 54 downloads)

Danny,

A very good reference is FEMP's (Federal Energy Management Program) publication:

Operations & Maintenance
Best Practices
A Guide to Achieving Operational Efficiency

You can find it on-line here:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/pdfs/omguide_complete.pdf

It compares different maintenance pratices on various types of machinery and provides some cost justification information.

Jon
Spintelligent Labs

Pete and Jon,

Thanks for the links.

The person I'm dealing with is trying to justify a program to management with energy savings as the primary contributor to savings. I would expect to find some small degree of energy savings from corrective measures, but I just can't see the existance of a predictive maintenance program being a significant contributor to energy savings. In industrial applications we always have the dominant item of lost production to justify a program, but in building maintenance that just isn't there. I would think the possibility of losing air, water, vacuum, etc in a hospital would be enough to convince management, but I guess not.

Being that I am going to have to convince myself first, this one is going to be a tough sell. Maybe I'll find something in the articles you guys have cited.

Thanks again,

Danny

Danny,

I do have some experience and insight into dealing with healthcare facilities. I'd rather talk abouot it off-line. Please email me (jon@spintelligentlabs.com) and I'll share what I've learned.

Jon
Spintelligent Labs

Danny, one way to approach this is with a "sanity check". Find out if you can what the total annual energy cost is for the facility. Then divide that into the annual cost of the program you will provide. If it's 0.1% then maybe it could be justified, but if it's, say, 5%, then no, there's no way it could be justified on energy savings alone.

Another approach is their insurance coverage. I don't know what kind of coverages they have, but it could be a plus for them to have a reliability program. I was contacted by a former client this week who wants me to do a quarterly survey for them. I asked if he was having problems, and he said, "No, I just need to get my insurance carrier off my back."

Rusty,

A sanity check is a very good starting point, indeed. I don't know for a fact that it has been looked at from the angle you suggest. Their insurance company may be involved i the process and I just don't know about it.

Thanks,

Danny

Dear Danny,

In our 25 Tons boiler,we had two oil pump;one was misaligned and other was properly aligned.We took amperage reading of the two pumps and the result are the following:

Pump which was properly aligned= 25 amperes
Pump which was not properly aligned= 27 amperes

By using the power formula you will find a big difference and the cost savings when running a pump which is properly aligned and a pump which is not properly aligned,that is only for a single pump.

If you you have 100 or more pumps which are not properly aligned then you will see the beauty of having the program.

Hoping that my sharing will give you more interest to appreciate the program.

Thank you and more power.

Jun "Dr J" Ruiz