energy monitoring

[Lancie1]

There is currently in place a system that does all the cycling including a load shedding setup, of which I am not privy to all that information.

If you do not have all the pertinent information, any solution that you might propose will be flawed. First GET the information on the current system.

 

[Lancie1]

...,this was looked into but information from utility company stated they have no power factor penalties.

I have heard that before, and probably that means no direct measurement of your plant power factor.

However, if your plant average power factor is low, that can cause larger currents, and larger currents cause higher KW peak loads, causing higher peak demand charges. Increasing your power factor results in lower currents at the utility meter (even though some currents may be higher between the new capacitors and the loads), and will indirectly reduce your power bill.

Once I had a boss that had a little side business next to his engineering offices, with a 3-phase 480 volt 600 Amp service from the utility. His power bill peak demand charge was too high, and I told him to install a power factor correction capacitor beside his main panel. He said "but the power company says they don't measure the power factor". I said let me order one anyway. He did, and about 2 months after installing it, he told me the one-month reduction in the power bill paid for that capacitor.