KBC is empowering plants and production facilities to manage their energy and carbon emissions through the launch of its Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot, a new offering under the KBC Co-Pilot Programme.
Just as the co-pilot of an aircraft is there to assist the pilot with additional knowledge and to step in and help at times of intense activity, the KBC Co-Pilot is there to remotely support the plant with expertise and insight supplementing the plant’s own capabilities and resources, ensuring it reaches its full potential.
The Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot will consistently assure all aspects of energy and carbon management. It brings together a comprehensive and powerful suite of energy management software and analytics, allied with consulting expertise, delivered via the KBC cloud, and sustained proactively now and into the future.
KBC’s Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot is ideally 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
In financial terms, the Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot will result in around 10 per cent 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 Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot uses KBC’s cloud to pro-actively deliver a uniquely complete range of energy management solutions. The key elements of this solution are:
- Real-time data connection to the plant using Web*Technician (a cloud-based data-as-a-service solution from KBC)
- Sitewide energy and carbon monitoring and management via KBC’s VM-EM energy management platform
- Real-time energy supply-side optimisation from KBC’s VM-ERTO energy real-time optimisation engine
- Multi-period energy supply-side optimization from KBC’s VM-EMPO energy management multi-time period optimisation engine
- Demand-side energy minimisation using KBC’s Petro-SIM simulation and analytics to ensure the optimum trade-off between yield and energy
- The maximisation of energy re-use via KBC’s HX-Monitor heat exchanger monitor and pinch technology
- All elements are supported by KBCs energy experts, and leverage KBCs Operational Excellence capabilities to ensure that the value of the service continues is sustained now and into the future
The Energy and Sustainability Co-Pilot is provided as a monthly subscription service with low up-front costs. This ensures the value the customer receives is always ahead of their costs and is the foundation for an agile, collaborative partnership to deliver energy and carbon reduction.
KBC CEO Andy Howell 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.”