Kenneth Flannery
MET, CEM, CBCP
Bender Energy Group, LLC | Director of Engineering
Speaker
Track B: Industrial Energy Management
Session B2: Industrial Energy Efficiency Case Studies
September 18, 2025 | 9:00 am - 9:30 am
The Importance of Flow Balancing Pumping Projects to Maximize System Efficiency
Many industrial manufacturing facilities have begun to utilize energy savings initiatives with their pumping system, installing energy savings projects based on simple ROI per individual project or initiative. Most manufacturing facilities are process/product driven. When investments are made in areas that will improve production output, energy efficiency in rarely considered.
Utilizing variable flow, parallel pumping, and other types of pumping energy savings initiatives indeed work. Through decades of projects in industrial facilities a common issue comes to light, in that most industrial pumping systems are overflowing the design for the process and or chiller, cooling tower, etc. This happens when too much safety factor is designed into the systems originally and the piping as installed actually has a much lower head pressure requirement than design, so the pumps run out the curve and overflow. There is also the case where an original system has equipment added to the point of failure them upgrade the pumping with no “engineered” calculations done for the system requirements and end up with too much pump. In either case this “overdesign” is costing large amounts of energy consumption and money to no reason.
These case studies show that by performing a complete flow balance to determine the actual flaw and pressure requirements increased the savings of pumping efficiency projects significantly. Example, a plastics manufacturer has five (5) individual water systems in their facility. The initial baseline to operate all five (5) systems was 282.9kW and 2,477,944kWh costing $178,412 annually to run their pumps. A project was initiated to utilize “parallel pumping” for all the systems. This resulted in an annual avoidance of 84kW and 735,732kWh saving $52,973 in operating cost annually. By implementing an engineered flow balancing the systems the annual avoidance increased to 137.8kW and 1,207,159kWh saving $86,915 in operating cost. This represents an additional 40% in avoided energy use and operating costs over the traditional projects alone.
These energy savings were achieved by in depth balancing and commission of the water, including a detailed re-calculation of the system head pressure requirements from the actual installed conditions, utilizing actual pressure measurements throughout the system.
Speaker Bio
Kenneth C. Flannery, MET, CEM, CBCP
I am a Facility and Energy Engineer, having worked in the industrial and manufacturing facilities engineering field since 1989, focusing on internally manufactured utilities including compressed air, chilled water, steam, and HVAC. Employed as a Facility Superintendent in the Automotive Industry has helped me with understanding customer needs where energy and efficiency improvements are concerned. In over 20 years as an Energy Engineer, I have actively performed energy and utility audits for over 50 individual customers at over 150 separate facilities, totaling over $20 million dollars of annual energy savings (non-adjusted), representing over 285 million annual kilowatt-hours of energy reduction, resulting in excess of 225 thousand metric tons of CO2 emissions reductions. I have Designed, Project Managed, and Commissioned industrial central utility systems for compressed air, chilled water, and steam, as well as Designed and Commissioned unique industrial process heat recovery projects. I am currently the Engineering Director for Bender Energy Group since 2013.
Certifications Include:
~ AEE Member since 2006
~ CEM (cert. no. 20719) 2013 ~ Certified Energy Manager
~ CPCP (cert. no. 1891) 2018 ~ Certified Building Commissioning Professional
~ Certificate for Humidification / e-Humidification Systems Design 2019
Contributions Include:
~2014 WEEC Presenter for Chilled Water Optimization for Process Hot/Cold Tanks. White paper trade published by AEE.
~ 2016 WEEC Speaker for Best Practices in Compressed Air, Compressed Air Piping Optimization for Low Pressure Drop. White paper trade published by AEE and Compressed Air Best Practices.
~ 2017 White paper for Parallel Pumping Optimization for Lowest Operating Costs.
~2022 AEE East Speaker for Industrial Energy Efficiency Solutions ~ Leveraging Combined Energy Projects to Maximize ROI with Energy Efficiency Programs. White paper trade published by AEE and Chiller & Cooling Best Practices.
~2022 AEE World Speaker for Industrial Energy Efficiency Solutions ~ Leveraging Combined Energy Projects to Maximize ROI with Energy Efficiency Programs.
~ Identified over $20 million dollars of annual savings opportunities in over 150 Industrial Facilities in over 20 Years as an Energy Professional.
~ Design, Project Manage, and Commission industrial central utility systems for compressed air, chilled water, and steam.
~ Design and Commission unique industrial process heat recovery projects.