By Sergio Ferreira / Published on Wed, 2010-03-10 15:48
Developing economic well-being and preserving a healthy environment are not opposed forces but do, on the contrary, have a primary relationship and require a similar way of thinking: maximising the efficiency of a product over its life cycle will minimise its total financial cost as well as the total environmental impact over its life cycle.
The case studies below were developed to substantiate this Life-Cycle-Thinking by delivering high-level messages supporting decision making on the sustainable energy arena.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Fri, 2009-11-06 01:00
To achieve system availabilities of the order of the six “9”s and beyond, IT and Telecom service providers are totally dependent upon a continuous power supply. Power variations or interruptions create significant disruptions for sectors that are judged by the reliability of their services.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Tue, 2009-11-03 13:09
Setting up a production process for the pharmaceuticals sector is not a trivial undertaking.
Electrical power variations or even minor interruptions can neutralise tightly controlled biological working conditions and ruin an entire batch, resulting in irretrievable production losses.
The longer the event, the harder a pharmaceutical company’s profit margins are hit. Ensuring continuity of power supply is therefore of fundamental importance for this sector.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Tue, 2009-08-04 09:21
A power supply interruption to an oil refinery can trigger a chain of catastrophic events.
This is due to the multiple interlinked chains of electrical systems and the mixture of highly volatile materials on which the processes are based.
Ensuring power system reliability is essential to avoid putting staff and neighbouring areas at risk, and to minimize costly incidents and production stoppages.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Mon, 2009-08-03 12:27
Whether public or private, a hospital can not afford unplanned power interruptions. Downtime significantly affects already pressured financial resources. Hospitals must be able to rely on a fully reliable, interference-free power supply to be sustainable and continuously provide a quality health service.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Wed, 2009-05-20 13:42
Retailers have to be increasingly competitive – pricing, minimizing operational costs and maximizing revenue all need continuous scrutiny – not to mention complying with an increasingly stringent regulatory environment. Unrecognised but very real, disruptive events such as power disturbances are frustrating and financially damaging. The lights go out, escalators stop functioning, tills are frozen, security systems fail. Customers walk out of or have to be escorted from the store. Financial losses start mounting up.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Wed, 2009-05-20 13:26
Many news media companies’ electrical installations are still unreliable.
News media depend on being able to get news out to as many people and as quickly as possible. Printed or broadcast, reliable electricity supply is crucial for this quick dissemination. In both cases, the speed of this turn-around cannot cope with any form of electrical disturbance. But do all media companies take sufficient measures to avoid seriously negative impacts that are caused by electric power supply disturbances?
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Mon, 2009-02-23 15:26
Metals manufacturing plants have a high demand for electrical power, are electric motor intense, have high raw material costs and rely heavily on sophisticated automation and on a skilled labour force. Common to these characteristics is that they all lead to significant operating losses when the electric power is interrupted. The European Copper Institute (ECI) Power Quality Survey has identified that the metals sector loses over 10% per cent of its net bottom line due to Power Quality operating issues.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Thu, 2009-01-29 14:30
Leonardo ENERGY has launched a new publication for electrical design engineers called “Guide for electrical design engineers”. Each chapter will study an electrical design case and present its methodical step-by-step calculation method. To view the different chapters, click on their title below.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Mon, 2008-12-08 15:49
The hotel business is one of the most competitive sectors, where profit margins are continuously under pressure.
It is essential for everything to run smoothly both to preserve margins and to maintain a reputation for comfort, efficiency and value.
The more people enjoy being on the premises, the more they will want to use the facilities – bars, meeting rooms, conference venues, business and fitness centres.
These valuable sources of added revenue are all dependent on a reliable electrical power supply.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Mon, 2008-11-10 16:32
There is much technical and conceptual information about Power Quality (PQ) available today – some is highly academic, some less so, but little if any is directly related to methodical measurement of end users’ electrical installations specifically for Maintenance Managers.
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By Stefan Fassbinder / Published on Mon, 2008-07-21 17:14
Modern dimmable electronic ballasts provide excellent versatility for lighting scenes in conference rooms, theatres and the like where magnetic ballasts cannot compete, although a new technique to make magnetic ballasts dimmable is presently under development in Canada but not yet available on the market (for news on this see here).
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Tue, 2008-06-24 16:41
At semiconductor manufacturing plants, Power Quality (PQ) solutions can be the deciding factor in maintaining competitiveness.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Thu, 2008-02-21 19:10
Today’s Pulp and Paper industry, faced by operating and energy cost increases, seek production optimization and stability. Unreliable power supplies are a major barrier to achieving this goal and create significant additional unplanned maintenance costs. The European Copper Institute (ECI) Power Quality Survey has identified that pulp and paper companies lose up to 11 per cent of their turnover as a result of poor Power Quality.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Fri, 2008-01-25 18:28
Photo copyright Siemens
Reliability and consistency of electricity supply is critical to many industrial and service activities. When the Power Quality is inadequate, business suffers. It is both surprising and alarming that companies often do not recognize that the causes of poor reliability are of their own making and that cost-efficient solutions are in their own hands. This was one of the main conclusions drawn from a European-wide survey in 2007 and detailed here.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Fri, 2007-07-06 22:37
The twin pillars of a sustainable policy
Any serious vision of a sustainable energy economy requires major commitments to both efficiency and renewables. Up to now, most policies and programmes for energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RES) have been deployed separately. Significant synergies between both pillars can be realized however by combining these two policy agendas.
Last May, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released a report on this topic.
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