Most industrial energy audits in Mexico are paid for, filed, and only partly acted on. The gap is not analytical. It is that no one owns the follow up after the consultant leaves. Planta en Control is a subscription Mexico Energy Partners built to close that gap, and it is aimed at plant directors and finance leads deciding whether the next energy budget line should fund another diagnostic or fund twelve months of execution discipline.
The service is designed around a target of 10% to 20% reduction in energy cost over the medium term. That is a target, not a measured result across a client population, and it should be read as such. For an external yardstick, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory assumed a 5% first year energy performance improvement from a formal energy management system, with about 1% a year afterwards, in its August 2016 study LBNL-1006337 on the global impact of ISO 50001. The same study reports that facilities certified under the US Superior Energy Performance program averaged 10% improvement per certification cycle, with individual results between 5.6% and 41.9%.
Read those two things together. A double digit reduction is achievable and documented. It is not automatic, and the spread between the best and worst results is wide enough that the management process is the variable, not the technology.
What the service is
Planta en Control combines energy monitoring, data analysis, and management of a portfolio of savings projects. The difference from a study is cadence. Instead of one report, the plant gets a monthly cycle of measurement, review and decision, with the same people in the room each time.
What runs each month
- Plant monitoring. We integrate consumption data, CFE bills, existing meters and, where needed, new metering points, to build the actual load profile. That means shifts, demand peaks, and the equipment that drives them, typically compressors, refrigeration, ovens, HVAC and motors. Where the existing metering and monitoring cannot attribute consumption to a system, closing that gap is the first piece of work.
- Periodic management reports. A weekly or biweekly executive summary covering the main deviations and two to three immediate recommendations. Each month, an energy performance report with consumption, cost and energy intensity indicators against an agreed baseline.
- Pipeline of savings opportunities. Every opportunity goes into one register with a status of idea, analysis, validation, approved or implemented. Each measure carries an estimated investment, savings in kWh and pesos, a payback and a priority.
- Monthly Energy Coach session. A Mexico Energy Partners consultant meets the plant team, including operations, maintenance and HSE, to review results, prioritize actions and follow up on commitments made the previous month.
What that produces over a year is visible in a bottling plant in Nuevo León that ran this model for twelve months, where the figures and the way they were built are set out in full.
The pipeline register is the part worth copying
The five statuses are not labels. Each one is a gate with a different owner and a different question.
An idea becomes analysis when someone is named to size it. Analysis becomes validation when the estimated kWh and peso saving has been checked against metered data rather than a nameplate. Validation becomes approved when a budget holder signs, which is where most measures stall, because approval needs a number the finance side trusts. Approved becomes implemented when the work is done and the change shows in the meter, not when the purchase order is raised.
Plants that already run an audit backlog usually find their measures clustered at one gate. Where the cluster sits tells you what the real problem is. A pile at analysis is a resourcing problem. A pile at approved is an execution problem. A pile at validation means the estimates are not trusted, and no amount of further study will fix that.
How this differs from an energy audit
A traditional energy audit is a one time diagnostic that ends with a document. Planta en Control replaces the document with a monthly review that has named owners, dated commitments, and a register in which unmoved items stay visible. The audit answers what could be done. This answers what was done last month and what is blocked this month. Both have a place, and an audit is still the right purchase for a site with no consumption data at all, which is the subject of our guide to energy audits for industrial facilities in Mexico.
The CONUEE obligation this feeds
For larger Mexican sites the monthly register is not only an internal tool. Under the administrative provisions published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 15 November 2018, a user qualifies as a Usuario de Patrón de Alto Consumo when annual electricity consumption in the previous calendar year exceeds 45 GWh, among other criteria. CONUEE requires those users to report between 1 March and 30 June each year on their energy consumption and on the conservation measures implemented, together with the energy and economic results of those measures.
That report is exactly what a pipeline register with an implemented status produces. Sites at or near the threshold should assume the reporting burden is coming and build the record before they need it, rather than reconstructing a year of measures in April.
What each side supplies
| Mexico Energy Partners provides | The plant provides |
|---|---|
| Baseline build from bills, meters and production data | Twelve months of CFE bills and the tariff class |
| Weekly or biweekly deviation summary | Access to the meter data feed |
| Monthly energy performance report | Monthly production volumes in the unit already reported |
| Pipeline register and status discipline | A named owner for the monthly review |
| Monthly Energy Coach session | Attendance from operations, maintenance and HSE |
Whether this fits your site
The test is arithmetic and you can run it before speaking to anyone. Take your annual electricity spend and work out what 1% of it is. If that number does not comfortably exceed twelve months of subscription fee, the model will not pay for itself and a one off study is the better purchase. If it exceeds it several times over, the question is no longer whether to run the process but who inside the plant will own it.
The second test is data. If no one can produce twelve months of bills and matching production volumes within a week, the first three months of any engagement will go on building that record rather than on saving anything.
Start with a three month pilot
Mexico Energy Partners runs a three month pilot to establish the baseline, populate the first pipeline and produce a 12 to 24 month work plan. To scope one, send twelve consecutive months of CFE bills, your tariff class, a site single line diagram if you have one, and the name of the person who will own the monthly review. What comes back is a pilot scope naming the metering gaps that have to be closed, an indicator set matched to the determinants on your own invoice, and the fee for the pilot period. We will confirm scope and timing once we have seen the data, and we do not promise a saving or a particular outcome.
Sources
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "Global Impact Estimation of ISO 50001 Energy Management System for Industrial and Service Sectors", LBNL-1006337, August 2016.
- "Disposiciones administrativas que establecen los criterios para determinar cuándo un usuario cuenta con patrón de alto consumo de energía", Diario Oficial de la Federación, 15 November 2018.
- Comisión Nacional para el Uso Eficiente de la Energía, guidance on the annual UPAC reporting window of 1 March to 30 June.
- The 10% to 20% range is Mexico Energy Partners' service design target. It is not drawn from a public source and is not a measured result across a client population.