Kohler Believing In Better Blog: How In-house Inventors Tempered Energy Use

You’ve heard this tip before: turn down your thermostat a few degrees when you’re not home. Easy energy savings, right? Well, we’ve taken this concept industrial-size.

The eight-person maintenance team at our Sanijura bathroom furniture plant in Champagnole, France, realized that not everything has to be on full blast all day long. With a little ingenuity and some mad engineering skills, the team made some impressive changes to energy burners.

• On-Demand Dust Collection – It’s a furniture plant; a lot of dust and wood chips need to be sucked out of the air. But instead of running the dust collection system all of the time, the team installed sensors in the pipes that automatically reduce fan speeds during non-peak times.
   
• Blending Natural and Efficient Lighting – Large skylights above the factory floor emit natural light. But when the light is dim, sensors recognize this and adjust the artificial (but LED-efficient) lighting.
   
• A Smart Boiler System – Ideally, wood scrap fuels a wood boiler to heat the plant. But when the temperature outside drops below freezing, the natural gas boiler kicks in. A custom controller monitors the temperature and then triggers the system, lowering natural gas consumption.

With their “on when you need it, off when you don’t” philosophy, these associates have saved energy (and thousands of euros)—and they’re looking to do more.