The technical presentation was preceded with an appeal by Cedric Hollingsworth from council, for the branch consider it's future support of donations to the Institute Benevolent fund.

A brief overview of the fund was given and also the reasoning behind the appeal. Continued sustainability and growth of the fund to cover future pension scares was of serious concern.

The technical presentation followed, given by John Broadbank and Ron Macdonald, of Group Schneider, entitled Energy Efficiency Measures.

Following some initial company information, the question was raised as to Why we as an industry needed to make energy savings?

DEFRA are focused on energy

requirements under ISO 14001

future electricity prices will only increase

power factor charges look likely to be reintroduced

quarries and asphalt plants have large consumptions

electricity is the most expensive fuel used in industry, with 65% consumed in motors

Enhanced Capital Allowance (ECA's) were explained in that they are designed to encourage energy saving projects and the fiscal incentive for companies is that for any project of expenditure that can be shown to produce energy savings would be subject to 100% tax relief in the first year of repayments.

It was suggested that companies need to plan for energy reduction by producing an "Energy Save" Policy document.

A site energy survey should then be carried out to identify the electricity consumers and then prioritise from the largest down.

It would be important to also look at metering and installations of strategically placed sub meters maybe required to identify individual or sections of a plant usages.

More accurate monitoring have shown to be vital in the goal of energy reduction. The fitting of frequency inverters to slow motors down was identified as a big saver.

Looking into the future sites may have as many as 400 sub meters, each using radio/gprs/gsm(mobile phone technology) to communicate to a server that records the data and can be accessed from the engineers or managers office.

Multi site linking to either a third party server or head office server, downloading to a web browser that could be accessed directly by an energy consultant are really benchmarking the future in energy saving.

A.Shakeshaft - Branch committee member