Process Control Initiative

Print This Page

Electrical energy accounts for a significant percentage of industrial organizations' operating costs and process systems are among the largest energy users in industrial operations.

The Process Control Initiative can help you improve the energy efficiency of your process systems now and over the long term. The program offers co-funding to identify opportunities to improve process controls to achieve reduced variance in process systems.

Is this offer for you?

The Process Control Initiative is available to industrial transmission customers billed under transmission service rate 1823. It will be of particular interest to industrial customers involved in process industries, such as forestry, mining, chemicals, oil and gas, and manufacturing.

How it works

Identify: Perform a preliminary assessment
We provide funding toward an assessment of your process control systems to identify the greatest potential within your facility. The completed assessment will prioritize the energy-saving opportunities according to the greatest potential.

The typical steps in an assessment are:

• Assign personnel, develop a scope of work and identify required resources
• Conduct a visual inspection of the plant, focusing on the priority systems
• Review plant area costs and load profiles
• Prioritize systems with high maintenance costs and energy use
• Analyze control loop performance and process control strategy for prioritized areas of the plant control system

Investigate: Perform a detailed study
After the assessment, you may choose to have a detailed study completed for a particular system from the ranked list, which we would also provide funding toward. The study will provide you with detailed recommendations, along with associated costs and benefits, and the business case to help implement the study findings.

Implement: Use the financial benefit of the Transmission Service Rate 
The Transmission Service Rate encourages customers to find ways to be more energy efficient by substantially increasing the financial benefit of implementing energy efficiency projects under the Tier 2 rate. When you decide to implement a project, we will offer technical guidance.

Sustain: Use Monitoring, Targeting and Reporting, training and support
To help you ensure that the savings you achieve through the process control initiative are sustained over the long term, we offer:

• Funding for Monitoring, Targeting and Reporting at your facility
• Process control loop tuning and optimization training for your technical staff
• Training and support for your process control expert on site

It pays to take action

Benefits
Upgrading process system controls can bring many benefits to industrial organizations, including:

• Energy savings of 3% to 6%
• Increased production
• Reduced peak load demand

Additional benefits for Pulp and Paper customers

• Reduced variability in pulp quality
• Decreased fibre costs
• Reduced specific energy consumption in Thermal Mechanical Pulping refining
• Increased paper machine speed