Availability-based Payback Method for Energy Efficiency Measures

Energy-efficient technologies can lead to high energy and monetary savings in numerous industries. However, a lot of potential identified in industries remains untapped due to comparatively short requested payback periods. Usually, companies base the calculation of their payback period on initial investment costs in conjunction with annual monetary energy savings. Energy efficiency measures, however, often lead to synergy effects which are not taken into account. Against this background, we illustrate that taking machine availability into account can shorten the payback period of energy efficiency measures considerably. Furthermore, we demonstrate a methodology to standardize this availability-based payback calculation.