Compressed Air Systems (CAS) are one of the most common and energy intensive utilities in industry, representing up to 10% of the industrial energy needs. Thus, they can be considered as one of the main target systems while planning energy efficiency actions implementation in industry. Nevertheless, most of the available benchmarks of energy consumption are based on nominal data, thus referringto the quality of the design, while benchmarks based on measurements under actual operating conditions are not yet available.In accordance with the Italian transposition of the European Directive 2012/27/EU (i.e. Legislative Decree 102/2014), large and energyintensive business organizations must perform energy audits at least every four years starting in 2015 and the Italian Energy, New Technology and Environment Agency (ENEA) has the task of collecting and analyzing them. In this context, adata collection focused on CAS has been carried out and the subsequent data analysis, focused on nine most promising industrial sectors, has allowed to assess the current state of the art of CAS's energy efficiency in Italy and to design a possible benchmarking system. Such a system iscomposed of a set of indicators and a benchmarking visual tool in the form of a matrix. In particular, results related to the Manufacturing of basic metals will be presented for sake of brevity. In this paper we present the results obtained from both the data analysis and the first application of the proposed benchmarking system, together with next steps for the creation of reliable sectorial and cross-sectorial benchmarks.

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Most manufacturing and process industries require compressed air to such an extent that in Europe, for instance, about 10% of the total electrical energy consumption of industries is due to compressed air systems (CAS). However, energy efficiency in compressed air production and handling is often ignored or underestimated, mainly because of the lack of awareness about its energy consumption, caused by the absence of proper measurements on CAS in most industrial plants. Therefore, any effective energy saving intervention on generation, distribution and transformation of compressed air requires proper energy information management. In this paper we demonstrate the importance of monitoring and controlling energy performance in compressed air generation and use, to enable energy saving practices, to enhance the outcomes of energy management projects, and to obtain additional benefits for non-energy-related activities, such as operations, maintenance management and energy accounting. In particular, we propose a novel methodology based on measured data, and baseline definition through statistical modelling and control charts. The proposed methodology is tested on a real compressed air system of a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in order to verify its effectiveness and applicability.

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