KBC launches energy and sustainability co-pilot

The co-pilot remotely supports a plant with expertise and insight that supplements the plant’s own capabilities and resources, ensuring it reaches its full potential. KBC’s offering brings together a suite of energy management software and analytics, combined with consulting expertise and delivered via the company’s cloud.

The co-pilot is suited to a plant or production operation where one or more of the following applies:

• Energy costs adversely impact plant competitiveness.
• Carbon taxation or reduction mandates threaten the plant’s license to operate, or investor or community perceptions of the business.
• A short-handed technical workforce is unable to maintain world-class energy management software tools or consistently implement their outputs.
• Production process performance and energy performance are tightly interlinked and need to be managed holistically.

KBC claims that use of the co-pilot will result in around 10% reduction in site energy costs and carbon emissions, leading to significant economic returns of between five and ten times that of the investment driven primarily by lower operating costs.

The key elements of the product are:

• Real-time data connection to the plant using Web*Technician (a cloud-based data-as-a-service solution from KBC).
• Site wide energy and carbon monitoring and management via the company’s VM-EM energy management platform.
• Real-time energy supply-side optimisation from the company’s VM-ERTO engine.
• Multi-period energy supply-side optimisation from the company’s VM-EMPO engine.
• Demand-side energy minimisation using the company’s Petro-SIM simulation and analytics.
• Maximisation of energy re-use via the company’s HX-Monitor heat exchanger monitor and pinch technology.

The co-pilot is provided as a monthly subscription service.

Andy Howell, CEO of KBC, said: “I’m excited to see the fusion of existing and new technologies, along with human capabilities, coming together to provide a game-changing service in the field of energy optimisation. Digitalisation is bringing in a new world of business models based on delivering outcomes, rather than products or labour by the hour. I’m proud that KBC is offering this type of service to assure value capture and sustainability for our customers. Through the KBC co-pilot programme we are ushering in a new era of collaborative partnership with the industries we serve, building on our historical strengths in engineering software and human expertise and embracing the potential of the cloud.”

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/clean-fuels/24012018/kbc-launches-energy-and-sustainability-co-pilot/