Similar to looking at monthly utility bills to watch your home’s electric, gas, and water usage, the Global Energy Management (GEM) team at the Corning Life Sciences plant in Treyburn-Durham, North Carolina, closely tracks how much energy the plant uses.

“We want to capture what we’re spending on our manufacturing floor, so we installed meters to get a snapshot of what our electric usage is in real time,” explained Van Hursey, the plant’s facilities coordinator and site energy manager.

GEM funded the purchase and installation of the meters. At least one year is needed to gather baseline data in the correlating software system, and now the team can monitor trends, spikes, and dips in the plant’s electrical usage.

After the success of the those meters, GEM took the initiative at the plant one step further, with the installation of meters wherever water and gas are used at the plant.

Now, Hursey can see real-time electric, water, and gas usage at the plant. He can separate the data by type (electric, gas, or water), by location at the plant, and by time – year-to-year, month-to-month, or even day-to-day. The software also allows users to send out daily reports, or create spreadsheets to find trends in the data.

However, when not at the computer, Van and other plant staff members are still alerted to any drastic spikes in usage. Alarms installed at every meter give real-time alerts via email or text message.

“If we use more than a certain amount of water, for example, we get an alert so we can go find on the reason for the excess use,” said Hursey. “It’s allowed us to quickly identify and fix on the problem, which has saved us water.

He added, “Sometimes you wonder if you’re making a difference, but this you can see and measure. It’s a win-win for us all. GEM has given us the tools to help ourselves, and we’re grateful. This has created a real sense of stewardship in the plant.”