I have been taking our electricity meter readings every day for the last few months to find out our daily and weekly electricity usage. The original idea was to relate the energy usage to the amount of muesli packed every day, however it soon became apparent that the two values do not relate to each other. This could be because we have a very high base load, so variations in production rates don’t significantly affect the energy usage, or it could be that a lot of energy is wasted.

In order to find out which of those two scenarios is occurring, I decided that it would be good to know exactly how much energy each piece of equipment uses. This would tell us what percentage of daily usage goes on production and what goes on lighting, heating and office equipment. It should also highlight any areas where energy is being wasted and the potential savings that could be made.

To take accurate measurements I would need a power meter that would tell me the electricity consumption of each machine so I spoke to the hire department at BSRIA Instrument Solutions who suggested the Elcomponents Energy Pro, the Megger MMC 850 and the LEM 2050 Analyst.