Rolls-Royce & Bentley: energy management

Rolls Royce & Bentley Motor Company speeds ahead with energy management to offset the Climate Change Levy.

Many manufacturers and heavy energy users see the introduction of the Climate Change Levy on April 1st, 2001 as simply another punitive tax to hamper production and business. Ian Baker, Rolls Royce & Bentley’s Environment Management Representative feels that the Climate Change Levy is a challenge. “It will mean taking measures to counteract the increased bills.” He agreed, “But it is vital in environmental terms to reduce energy consumption.”

Rolls Royce & Bentley Motor Cars is a member of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders(SMMT) and, as such, is part of the first wave of the DETR’s Sectorial Agreements to obtain relief from the Climate Change Levy in certain, high energy processes. The SMMT agreement is to reduce energy consumption by 12% by 2010, based on a1995 baseline. This further reduction is never an easy task as most plants are already aware of minimising energy wastage.

The Rolls Royce & Bentley plant in Crewe, Cheshire started production of Motor Cars in 1946. It now covers 60 acres and employs 2,500 personnel on a full time basis. The site includes Design & Development , Sales and Marketing as well as Manufacturing facilities and is currently undergoing major refurbishment since it’s acquisition by the Volkswagen Group in 1998 and the subsequent £500 million investment programme embarked on.

Within the facility changes, energy conservation measures feature prominently with the introduction of energy efficient roofing materials, space heating units and lighting. Overall this will mean extending the current 98 data channels, which use Stark RT software to collect data, up to 150 and ensure Rolls-Royce & Bentley Motor Cars move away from using apportionment models to measure specific energy usage in key areas, particularly those covered by the Sectorial Agreement.

Twelve months ago Ian Baker chose Stark RT as Rolls Royce & Bentley’s energy management tool. “Until then I had been spending every Saturday morning with an Excel spreadsheet”! he commented. After an initial period of configuration which Stark and Ian Baker worked through together; an interesting picture of energy usage began to emerge. Ian Baker was already aware of the costs per hour of the plant running at full capacity and which areas should be using little or no energy at certain time of the day. When the new metering and monitoring was in place, together with the excellent graphical and interpretive facilities which Stark gives, it was relatively easy to identify to the appropriate high user areas anomalies in usage trends thus enabling Rolls-Royce & Bentley Motor Cars to record the lowest units of energy used per car manufactured for several years.