Improvement of energy efficiency, reduction of operating costs, and reduction of harmful emissions released into the atmosphere are issues of major concern in modern energy plants.
According to the Aberdeen Group's "ERP in SME: Fueling Growth and Profit" (PDF), an ERP deployment brings around 22percentt reduction in operating costs, 20percentt in administrative costs, 17percentt reduction in inventory management cost, and around the same level of improvements in both scheduled compliance and on-time delivery.
There was also a small decrease of £700,000 in borrowing and a smaller reduction in operating costs.
To offer a competitive price and reliable service, a reduction in operating costs will be vital by implementing a number of measures, including operation of heavier and longer trains, wider loading gauge, higher average speed, and better utilisation of wagon space and all assets.
But the big reduction in operating costs would come from reduced servicing, as electric-drive systems have far fewer moving parts than piston engines.
That way, energy can be efficiently saved and a reduction of operating costs can be achieved.
Compared to a single stage system, an optimal system had a 50% reduction in operating costs.
Hence, the annual reduction in operating costs is approximately NOK 13 million with a discounted value of NOK 200 million.
The optimization results are utilized to change the operating conditions of the benchmark problem leading to a 17% reduction of operating costs.
Notably, an 83.7%, 85.9% and 61.3% reduction in operating costs could be achieved in the ethylene dichloride, acetic acid and alkanes separation processes, respectively.
Experiments were performed on a set of benchmark circuits and the results show a reduction in operating costs up to 45% as compared to prior work.
