Monitoring energy consumption
Published on 9/4/2025
Energy issues are at the core of environmental and economic challenges. For an industrial company, monitoring and controlling its energy consumption is key. SILAB is aware of its responsibility and has been committed for several years to a process of continuous improvement aimed at promoting energy efficiency in a sustainable way.
A specific objective
The goal of SILAB’s Actively Caring program is a 10% reduction of energy consumption for the manufacture of one product unit compared with 2019.
A dedicated team
To achieve this goal, SILAB relies on a dedicated team of three employees from the Environment, Projects, and Maintenance departments. Two of them have undergone specific training to become “energy advisors,” enabling them to provide valuable technical expertise in identifying and implementing high-impact actions.
This team works on several optimization areas:
- energy recovery;
- installation of heat insulation;
- optimization of cooling units;
- optimization of the compressed air plant;
- smart lighting and heating management.
Their daily work contributes to the concrete and measurable evolution of industrial practices.
Mapping consumption
Conducted every four years, the regulatory energy audit enables SILAB to map its consumption and identify new areas for action. The last audit took place in 2024.
In line with its water-related initiatives, SILAB also launched a program to understand and map energy consumption in the same year. This consists of a “measurement plan” that provides an overview of the energy measurements already in place.
In the action plan suggested after this work, they focused on getting electric meters set up. This study helped figure out some new measurement points to add and the plan for measuring (development on Centralized technical management).
Here are the steps of the project:
- End of 2024: installation of 20 meters in the production workshops and the Research Center. These will complement the 37 meters already in place in newer buildings.
- First half of 2025: deployment of a “metering system” that connects all meters to the building management system in order to monitor daily electricity consumption across the entire site.
- Second half of 2025: writing up requirements to set up a “measurement system” in 2026. This is software that can centralize and analyze energy consumption data, using trend graphs, consumption histories, and alerts in case of anomalies.
This project will therefore make it possible to identify abnormal or excessive consumption, determine the minimum basic consumption, and measure the savings achieved after an improvement measure has been implemented.