Purpose The purpose of the paper is to examine the monitoring of electrical energy consumption, measures adopted for reducing energy consumption, barriers to energy efficiency improvement and driving forces for energy efficiency improvement in three industrial clusters. It is intends to capture the managerial perspectives on energy saving practices and to identify the possible energy saving opportunities in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach Three industrial clusters were identified for the study. Research instrument based in-person survey was conducted in which the authors directly administered the questionnaire to all the 181 organisations. This was thought of to facilitate not so well-educated respondents. The survey took about six months in which 110 units responded. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and path analysis were used to draw inferences. Findings There is ample scope for energy savings in the studied clusters. Energy efficiency in many organisations has deteriorated. Their attitude to embrace new or modern technology is shunning. Management’s belief that prevailing technology is efficient, lack of skilled labour, lack of accessibility to updated or modern technology, and lack of compatibility of new technology are found to be the barriers to energy efficiency improvement. Benchmarking by appropriate governments and publicly financed energy auditing act as the driving forces. Originality/value The SMEs must use simple yet powerful energy auditing practices on regular basis to reduce energy consumption. This will not only result in lesser energy costs but also lessen the burden on environment. As these are predominantly small enterprises, appropriate governments interventions are essential to bring the desired change.

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 Abstract: The reported research explains energy saving opportunity in welding process dominated industry carried out for different small and medium scale enterprises that produce components for agricultural applications. The study concentrates the energy audit on the agricultural implements and tractor trailer industries as the agriculture is the main occupation of India. A total number of 15 small and medium scale industries are considered for the energy audit. The investigations revealed welding operation as a major energy consumer in agriculture implement industries contributing to about 84% of the total energy consumption. The welding machine efficiency varies from 35% to 50% in the considered industrial clusters. Based on the results it is suggested that the energy saving can be increased by 40% -45% by adoption of inverter arc welding technology.Keywords: About four key words or phrases in alphabetical order, separated by commas.