Analysis of electricity consumption: a study in the wood products industry

This paper evaluates the effect of industry segment, year, and US region on electricity consumption per employee, per dollar sales, and per square foot of plant area for wood products industries. Data was extracted from the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) database and imported into MS Excel. The extracted dataset was examined for outliers and abnormalities with outliers outside the quantile range 0.5-99.5 dropped from the analysis. A logarithmic transformation was applied to eliminate the skewness of the original data distributions. Correlation measurements indicated a moderate association between the response variables; therefore, a multivariate analysis of variance test was performed to measure the impact of the three factors: industry type, year, and region, simultaneously on all response variables. The results indicated some effect associated with all three factors on the three measures of electricity consumption. Subsequently, univariate ANOVA tests were conducted to determine the levels of the factors that were different. Most levels of industry type were associated with significantly different energy consumption, an expected result since some of the industries are more energy intensive than others. The industries in Standard Industry Code (SIC) 2493 (reconstituted wood products) are the groups with the highest electricity consumption with means of 38,096.28 kWh/employee, 0.86 kWh/sales, and 154.14 kWh/plant area while industries grouped in SIC 2451 (mobile homes) have the smallest consumption with means of 6811.01 kWh/employee, 0.05 kWh/sales, and 9.45 kWh/plant area. Interestingly, differences in regional consumption were found to be linked to the proportion of industry types by region. Data analysis also indicated differences in electricity consumption per employee for the factor year, but for the other response variables, no differences were found. These main results indicate that industries in the wood products sector have different electricity consumption rates depending on the type of manufacturing processes they use. Therefore, industries in this sector can use these comparisons and metrics to benchmark their electricity consumption as well to understand better how electricity costs might vary depending on the region they are located.