Etteplan's engineering unit  in Kouvola, Finland, has been doing energy analysis already for two decades. It all started with pulp and paper mills but now energy analysis are done also for saw mills, food production facilities, recycling industry - basically all kinds of production units.

In these analysis, Kouvola engineers analyze the energy flows and usage and find out saving potential. Also water consumption is analyzed. The report describes the energy efficiency of operations and recommended saving measures.

In some customer cases the savings has been even 75 per cent in heating.

“Typical savings are from 20 to 40 per cent - both in budget and in carbon dioxide emissions. The payback period is usually from six months to four years”, says Eero Alenius, Kouvola office manager.

Changes required in the production processes are usually quite simple. A lot can be done with changing daily procedures in production and improving maintenance routines. But also investments can be needed.

“After the analysis, a lot of investments have been done in heat recovery, water recycling and in pump drives”, tells Raija Askola, expert in Engineering Analysis at Kouvola office.

In the future, energy analysis will become mandatory for large-scale industry. In Finland, smaller factories can still receive financial support from Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy for the analysis. In the future, also material analysis will become more popular.

“We have piloted material analysis already for some years ago but we haven’t seen a bigger interest yet”, says Askola.