Successful facility wide energy management system addition at a minerals processing plant

Many minerals processing plants across the globe have been operational for several years and are filled with legacy electrical systems of multiple vintages with disparate control and monitoring components. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of one such plant, which has been operating for over 80 years. As the original plant was built before the latest innovations in metering and monitoring devices, the plant made a decision to purchase and self-install metering to create a facility wide monitoring and energy management system. The project was funded by a corporate program that granted capital funding for programs focused on saving energy. The energy monitoring devices were integrated with the plant distributed control system so that operators now have visibility to energy usage throughout the plant. As a result, plant operations are making informed decisions based on optimized energy usage. Today, the plant is running more efficiently as energy usage is measured and visible at all levels across the plant organization.