5 Energy Monitoring Mistakes Industrial Plants Must Avoid
Introduction
Energy monitoring is one of the most valuable practices an industrial maintenance team can adopt. But too often, it’s implemented with gaps that limit its impact.
In this article, we highlight five common energy monitoring mistakes made in industrial plants—and how to avoid them. Whether you’re just starting or scaling your energy strategy, these lessons will save you time, money, and wasted effort.
1. Monitoring Energy Without Linking It to Assets
One of the biggest energy monitoring mistakes is collecting usage data but not tying it to specific equipment.
Without asset-level granularity:
- You can’t tell which machines are underperforming
- You lose the ability to compare similar assets
- Downtime and consumption cannot be correlated
This creates data silos that limit your visibility into operational efficiency. Energy consumption data becomes more valuable when you can contextualize it with asset age, maintenance history, and production volume.
Fix it: Integrate meters with your CMMS (like MaintBoard) and map each meter to an asset ID. This enables real-time alerts, asset-specific benchmarks, and energy-based work order triggers.
2. Focusing Only on Total kWh Instead of Energy KPIs
Just watching the utility meter won’t tell you where the waste is.
Symptoms of this mistake:
- Energy spikes go unnoticed unless bills increase
- No per-unit tracking of kWh or cost
- No breakdown of energy consumption by category
This is equivalent to measuring output without knowing what’s driving inefficiency. You’re managing energy blindly.
Fix it: Track actionable KPIs like:
- Energy Consumption per Unit
- Idle Energy Waste
- Energy Cost per Downtime Hour
- Energy per Work Order
MaintBoard helps you visualize these KPIs at both asset and plant levels, making it easier to prioritize corrective actions and justify capital upgrades.
3. Ignoring Energy Consumption During Downtime
Machines don’t stop drawing power just because production stops.
Why it matters:
- Equipment left on standby still consumes power
- Ovens, chillers, and air systems maintain conditions even when idle
- Downtime energy loss silently inflates your cost per unit
Not tracking this leads to gross underestimation of energy waste. For high-load equipment, just one hour of downtime can result in significant kWh losses that aren’t accounted for in maintenance reporting.
Fix it: Use downtime tracking in your CMMS to compare energy draw during uptime vs. downtime. Set alerts for abnormal idle energy consumption. Include this analysis in your energy audits.
4. Treating Energy Monitoring as a One-Time Setup
Energy monitoring is not “set it and forget it.” Without continuous review:
- Thresholds become outdated
- Baselines shift
- You miss optimization opportunities
Plants evolve—new machines are added, old ones degrade, and production patterns shift. Your energy baseline should reflect these changes.
Fix it:
- Review energy KPIs monthly or after significant process changes
- Update baseline targets seasonally or after retrofits
- Use CMMS dashboards to track long-term energy trends and trigger reviews
With MaintBoard, you can also log energy-based work order outcomes to refine your audit cycle.
5. Failing to Train Technicians on Energy Anomalies
Energy data is useless if technicians don’t know how to act on it.
Signs this mistake is happening:
- Spikes in consumption are ignored
- Alerts are dismissed without root-cause checks
- Energy audits don’t lead to maintenance actions
Your technicians are on the frontline. If they’re not using the energy data, its impact remains theoretical.
Fix it: Train your team to treat energy data as an early failure signal. Incorporate it into PM checklists, troubleshooting procedures, and root cause analysis templates. In MaintBoard, you can also tag work orders that result from energy triggers and measure their impact over time.
Conclusion: Get More from Your Energy Monitoring System
Avoiding these five energy monitoring mistakes will unlock better insights, smarter maintenance, and more meaningful savings.
When energy data is structured, visualized, and actionable, your maintenance team becomes a key driver of operational efficiency.
If you’re serious about improving energy visibility and asset performance, you need a CMMS that goes beyond tracking hours and parts.
MaintBoard was built for energy-conscious maintenance teams.
Talk to us to see how we help you catch problems before they cause waste.