BACKGROUND
Gardline was established in 1969 to provide marine support to a flourishing offshore oil and gas industry in the North Sea. Today, Gardline is a 1,000-strong, £140m turnover group of businesses, headquartered still in Great Yarmouth but whose activities around the world now include satellite communications, marine sciences, security, ship building, dry dock engineering, geographical information systems and digital mapping.
Engineering is at the core of Gardline’s business
The Great Yarmouth HQ has grown over the years to support global business growth and now employs several hundred staff – with over £1m annually spent on electricity.
ENERGY MANAGEMENT
Controlling costs is a challenge, as for all ambitious businesses, and with many of the businesses being highly energy-intensive energy costs have a high profile. The cost focus is strong in the Head Office as well as in the field, and Gardline have been actively searching for ways to manage energy spend.
GREEN RUNNING
Having decided to look seriously at energy costs, Gardline selected Green Running as its supplier and consulting partner based on an evaluation of its products and the consulting support offered. One Green Running consultant was engaged to guide and support a project led by an internal Gardline project manager.
Green Running’s e Analyser product provides a simple and highly effective way of monitoring and controlling energy usage. Its finely calibrated monitoring capability, with data tracked at sub- sub-second intervals, allows Energy Managers to spot when exactly devices are switched on and off, making sense of an otherwise extensive stream of data.
SAVING COST AT HEAD OFFICE
Gardline’s initial energy-saving project focused on its Head Office. Using several e Analysers, electricity usage on major circuits was tracked for a full week to provide a comprehensive set of measures. Green Running’s proprietary 5-step approach was then followed to help the project team identify exactly where energy was being used – and where it could be saved. Within a few weeks, significant savings were identified and captured.
Alwyn Davies, the Gardline project manager, explains:
“Looking closely at the energy we’re actually consuming makes savings so easy. For example, after just a couple of days’ monitoring we were surprised to see something big happen every evening at 7pm. Taking a closer look, we found that this was actually due to a faulty machine, meaning that large amounts of energy were being wasted without our knowledge.”
After a few months cost savings are racking up, and Gardline’s HO is aiming for savings of 20% by the end of 2011.
EVALUATING NEW ELECTRICAL PRODUCT
Another Gardline company makes electrical equipment. There, besides monitoring overall energy usage, Gardline staff used e Analyser to test the energy footprint of a major new product – a heat pump. “The heat pump was developed with an innovative design, and it was very successful at 123, but we weren’t sure if it would be efficient as a product. Using e Analyser allowed us very easily to test the product in a large number of real-life situations”.
