Assessments

Eligibility

Find out if your plant is eligible for a free assessment and learn more about the benefits you can get from it.

Location: Must be a manufacturing facility within 150 miles of Denton, TX. 

Manufacturing Sector: Must be a manufacturing facility with a SIC code 20 to 39 / NAICS code 311 to 339 (excluding: oil and gas production, farming and ranching).

Data: Must be willing to supply certain data about energy use (copies of electric and natural gas bills for 12 months), number of employees, annual production, gross annual sales, and other items.

Plant by Plant Basis: Must be eligible on a plant-by-plant basis; a plant owned by a large company owning many plants is eligible if the individual plant meets the established criteria.

Four Specific Criteria: 

• Gross annual sales below $100M
• Fewer than 500 employees at the plant site
• Annual utility bills between $100K and $3.5M
• No in-house professional staff to perform the assessment.

Assessment Process

The UNT IAC team will work with facility personnel to schedule a single-day assessment and get the necessary information prior to the visit. Typical activities of the assessment day are listed in Step 4 below!

Step 1: Pre-Assessment Information Gathering 

Client fills out an online Pre-assessment Form. This form includes:

• Size of plant and plant layout
• Industry type (SIC/ NAICS code) and process description
• Production levels, units and dollars, operating hours
• List of major energy consuming equipment
• A one-year history of utility bills

Step 2: Obtaining Proper Points of Contact 

• Plant manager
• Energy manager
• Environmental personnel
• Maintenance personnel

Step 3: Pre-Assessment Analysis 

• Analyze the manufacturing process
• Chart and graph utility bills
• Analyze utility bills for trends and errors; establish unit cost of energy
• Start plant profile using QuickPEP
• Identify key energy systems
• Review design and other technical documentations
• Identify energy saving potential recommendations using IAC database
• Develop Strategy for Assessment Day

Step 4: Day of the Assessment 

• Arrival (typically 9 am)
• Introduction (~15 mins.)
• Description of manufacturing process and operations (~15 mins)
• Plant tour (~1-2 hrs.)
• Meeting room debriefing (~15 mins)
• Reviewing notes and brainstorming at lunch (~1 hr.)
• Refining list of opportunities to be investigated (~10 mins.)
• Data gathering (~1 hr.)
• Exit interview (~ 15 mins.)

Step 5: Post Assessment Activities 

• Conduct engineering and financial analysis
• Create an IAC Report within two months after the site visit with the following content
  • Executive Summary including summary of recommendations
  • Plant Description
  • Process Description
  • Resource Charts and Tables
  • Major Energy Consuming Equipment
  • Best Practices
  • Description of Individual Energy Saving Recommendations
• Draft Case Studies/Success Stories
• Follow-up to Report
• Positive publicity posts on social media

Confidentiality

The UNT IAC keeps all data and analysis confidential to the maximum extent possible. Data is not shared with any organization or agency except the US Department of Energy, the program sponsor. This is necessary as DOE field managers review the report to ensure continued high quality of the reporting. The DOE also maintain the data in an aggregated form in a national database that is available to the public.