Every plant knows its total energy bill. Far fewer know which machine, which line or which hour of the night is behind it. That gap has become expensive. Energy prices for industry remain high, and much of the waste in a plant never shows up on a monthly invoice: compressors running at night, machines idling between shifts, cooling working against heating. The good news is that finding this waste rarely needs new equipment. Most of it can be spotted with data your plant already collects. Below are ten places to look, taken from our free guide, Where does your plant's energy go? A 10-point checklist for plant heads and energy managers. What you need before you start You need three things, and most plants already have them: - Energy readings from your main meter and any sub-meters, ideally in 15-minute steps. - Machine status: when each machine is running, idle or off, from its controls or production records. - Your shift plan: when the plant is meant to be producing, and when it is not. Put these side by side and the waste starts to show. Three checks to start with If you only have time for a few, start here. These three usually reveal the most waste for the least effort. 1. Energy use when production stops Look at how much power your plant draws at night, on Sundays and on holidays, when nothing should be producing. This is your base load. How to check: compare your 15-minute meter readings during production with the same readings on a weekend. Warning sign: if your plant uses nearly as much power on Sunday as on Tuesday, something is running that should not be. 2. Compressed air leaks and pressure Depending on the industry, compressed air can account for 5–25% of a site's electricity use, and a lot of it can simply leak away. How to check: run the compressors on a Sunday, when nothing is using air. Any air used then is going into leaks. An ultrasonic leak detector will find the exact spots. Warning sign: a plant that has not looked for leaks in a long time can lose around 20% of its compressed air. A well-maintained system stays below 10%. 3. Big users you cannot see Some large energy users have no meter of their own, so their consumption is hidden in the total. How to check: list your ten largest energy users and mark which ones are measured separately. Warning sign: a large part of the bill cannot be traced to any area or machine. You cannot fix what you cannot see, so these are the first places to start measuring. Seven more places to look The full checklist covers seven more areas where energy quietly slips away: - Machines left running between shifts. Presses, CNCs and ovens that stay on through breaks and shift changes, drawing power but producing nothing. - What causes your highest peaks. Peak demand affects grid charges as well as energy costs, and peaks often come from several large machines switching on at once. - Cooling, chillers and HVAC. Chillers running at full power on a cool weekend night, or heating and cooling running at the same time. - Lighting and support systems in empty areas. Halls, warehouses and offices that are empty at night but lit and ventilated as if it were day. - Energy per part produced. A busy line will always use more energy. What matters is whether it uses more per good part. - Identical machines, different consumption. Machines of the same type, running the same product, that use clearly different amounts of energy. - Start-up and warm-up energy. Furnaces, ovens and moulding machines switched on long before they are needed, or cycled off and on over short breaks. The guide explains how to check each one and the typical sign that something is wrong. From a one-off check to a weekly routine A one-off check finds waste once. A routine stops it from coming back. Here is a simple way to build one: 1. Pick three numbers to watch every week: weekend base load, energy per part on your biggest line, and compressor run time when production is off. 2. Give each number an owner who looks at it weekly and asks why when it moves. 3. Review once a week for 15 minutes, in an existing meeting rather than a new one. 4. Fix one thing at a time, then check the next week's numbers to see whether the fix worked. 5. Add the next check once the first three numbers are stable. The hard part is rarely the analysis. It is collecting data from meters, machines and shift plans into one place every week without spending hours in spreadsheets. That is where Itanta's Prompt to Insights helps. You describe what you want in plain language, for example "Build an energy dashboard and flag the biggest consumer", and Prompt to Insights builds it from the meters and machines you already have. It runs these checks continuously, shows the root cause and a recommended action, and keeps your data in your environment. Download the free checklist Get all ten checks in one place: what to look for, how to check and the typical warning sign for each, plus a score table to see where your plant stands today and a 5-step weekly routine. Download the free e-book: Where does your plant's energy go? Track these parameters in Itanta's Prompt to Insights Every parameter in this checklist can be tracked in Prompt to Insights: weekend base load, idle time between shifts, compressor run time, peak demand, chiller and HVAC use, energy per part and start-up energy. Prompt to Insights works with the meters and machine data you already have. Ask in plain language and get a live dashboard, with the root cause and a recommended action, instead of a once-a-year spreadsheet exercise. Try Prompt to Insights free for 15 days or book a 30-minute demo.