ISSN: 1410-2331

CREATING THE STANDARD FOR SPECIFIC ENERGY
CONSUMPTION AT PALM OIL INDUSTRY
Alfa Firdaus1 M Syamsul Ma’arif2
Faculty of Engineering, Mercu Buana University,
Jl. Meruya Selatan, Kembangan, Jakarta 10410
2
Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Bogor Agricultural University,
Jl. Raya Darmaga, Bogor 16680
Email: alfa_firdaus@mercubuana.ac.id, syamsul4958@gmail.com
1

Abstract -- There is currently no standard for the Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) in the palm oil
industry. SEC is a value that can be used as an indicator to measure the optimization level in the use
of energy. Indonesia as one of the largest palm oil producing countries requires a standard for energy
intensity in the palm oil industry. SEC in palm oil mill is defined in the amount of energy per unit of
production (kWh/kg). The classifying method that has been used in this study is K-means cluster
analysis with the measurement samples in 14 palm oil mills for 12 months of period. This study has
suggested the SEC standard for Indonesian palm oil industry and it is expected to be SEC reference
for other studies in the palm oil industry.
Keywords: SEC, palm oil, energy
Abstrak – Saat ini, tidak terdapat standarisasi mengenai konsumsi energi spesifik atau Specific
Energy Consumption (SEC) di dunia industri minyak kelapa sawit. SEC adalah ukuran yang dapat
digunakan sebagai indikasi untuk mengukur tingkat optimum dalam penggunaan energi. Indonesia
adalah salah satu negara penghasil minyak kelapa sawit terbesar yang membutuhkan standarisasi
tersebut untuk mengetahui intensitas energi pada industrik kelapa sawit. SEC pada industri kelapa
sawit didefinisikan sebagai suatu jumlah energi per unit produksi (kWh/kg). Beberapa metoda
klasifikasi yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah Analisis cluster K-Mean dengan sampel
pengukuran 14 buah pabrik minyak kelapa sawit selama periode 12 bulan. Penelitian ini menyarankan
standar SEC untuk industri kelapa sawit Indonesia dan diharapkan dapat menjadi referensi untuk
penelitian,
Kata kunci: SEC, minyak kelapa sawit, energi

INTRODUCTION
Energy supply crisis is now becoming a
strategic issue in the national development.
Growth in energy consumption as a result of
increasing
population,
industrialization,
transportation and welfare of the people is
causing the imbalance between the energy
demand and supply. Meanwhile, the main energy
source such, as fuel oil and natural gas, has
increasingly been depleted and the utilization of
alternative energy yet optimized, so we need
significant efforts in earnest to harness energy
wisely and efficiently.
Energy conservation is the use of energy
efficiently and rationally, without prejudice to the
use of energy that is absolutely necessary.
Efforts that we can do in energy conservation at
all stages of utilization, involve the use of
efficient technologies and the cultivation of
energy-saving lifestyles. In practical terms the

Alfa Firdaus, Creating the Standard

energy conservation efforts involve reducing the
amount of energy used while producing the same
or even better results. This effort can increase
corporate profits, environmental value, national
security, personnel security, and human comfort.
The initial step in the conservation of
energy is the energy audit. The energy audit is a
Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) among the
outputs. The objective of the energy audit it self
is to review the present energy consumption
pattern and suggest ways and means for
improving energy utilization by bringing about
optimum energy balance and target for
continuous improvement towards minimizing the
SEC.
SEC standard formulation in this study is
the result of processing the data obtained from
energy audits in 14 palm oil mills throughout
2014.

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SINERGI Vol. 20, No. 1, Februari 2016: 9-13

PRODUCT OPPURTUNITY GAP
The identification of product opportunities
should be the core force that drives companies.
Product opportunity exists when there is a gap

between what is currently on the market and the
possibility for new or significantly improved
products that result from emerging trends (Cagan
and Vogel, 2001).

Figure 1. Scanning SETE Factors leads to POGs
A product that successfully fills a Product
Opportunity Gap (POG) does so when it meets
the conscious and unconscious expectations of
consumers and is perceived as useful, useable,
and desirable. Successfully identifying a POG is
a combination of art and science. It requires a
constant sweep of a number of factors in three
major areas: Social trends (S), Economic forces
(E), and Technological advances (T) (Vogel et
al., 2005). In this paper we added one more
factor, which is Environmental impact (E).
In the early stages of an innovation
journey, we must identify opportunities with
SETE factors for product opportunity gap. After
that, we must understand opportunities by value
opportunity on product attributes / specifications.
At the last stage of product planning, we must
build the product concepts.
SETE factors for product opportunity gap are:
social trends: the trend of 'green lifestyle' which
calls for the eco labeling of palm oil products,
economic forces: how to give the value of sal, es
in the global market with palm oil products that
consume less energy, technological advances:
trigger improvements towards energy efficient
technology and environmental impact: setting the
benchmark for the preparation of life cycle
analysis (LCA)
While we get the opportunity value of the
impact of societal influence connected to and

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addressed by the SEC standards, in which the
people have environmental awareness. With the
SEC reference standard, the people can identify
mills that have high or low energy intensity.
These SETE factors generates opportunities to
set a SEC standards that can have an effect on
the production process at the palm oil industry.
The goal is to create an added value by
identifying an emerging trend and to match that
trend with the right tool.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The existing research in this area can be
broadly viewed under two different perspectives
of ‘plant’ and ‘process’ level. The first area, the
‘plant’ level perspective, has focused on the
energy consumed by infrastructure and other
high level services that are responsible for
maintaining the required production conditions or
environments. Examples of such energy
consuming activities would be ventilation,
lighting, heating and cooling within a facility
(Moss, 2006). Energy management systems
(EMS) are commonly used to monitor these
activities (Somervell, 1991). For example, Boyd
et al. (2008) utilises a statistical analysis
approach to determine the manufacturing Energy
Performance Indicators based on ‘plant level’
variables.
On the other hand, the research targeting

Alfa Firdaus, Creating the Standard

ISSN: 1410-2331

the energy consumption at the process level has
concentrated on individual equipment, machinery
and workstations within a production system.
Substantial research has been targeted to
document, analyse and reduce process
emissions for a wide range of available and
emerging manufacturing processes (Devoldere
et al., 2007) (Herman et al., 2007)
Overcash et al. (2009) along with a group
of other engineers are working to produce an
engineering rule-of-practice-based analysis of
separate unit processes used in manufacturing
and the information is collated in the form of a
unit process life cycle inventory (UPLCI) which
would help the evaluation of manufactured
products through the quantification of various
parameters including: input materials, energy
requirements, material losses and machine
variables.
In addition, the specific energy of various
manufacturing
processes
was
previously
summarized by Gutowski et al. (2006). They had
develop generalised ‘equipment-level’ energy
models, using average energy intensities of
different manufacturing processes to evaluate
the efficiency of processing lines. However, the
considerations of energy flows at plant or
process level cannot provide an overview of
‘‘how much energy is required to manufacture a
unit product’’.
This study, though, will focus on the result
of energy audit at the palm oil industry when
characterizing the specific energy consumption.
The approach in this research is based on a
product viewpoint with the aim of representing
the amount of energy attributed to the
manufacture of a unit product of Crude Palm Oil
(CPO).
METHODE OF COLLECTING DATA
The audit process starts by collecting
information about a facility’s operation and about
its past record of utility bills. This data is then
analyzed to get a picture of how the facility
uses—and possibly wastes—energy, as well as
to help the auditor learn what areas to examine
to reduce energy costs. Specific changes—
called Energy Conservation Opportunities
(ECO’s)—are identified and evaluated to
determine their benefits and their costeffectiveness.
These ECO’s are assessed in terms of
their costs and benefits, and an economic
comparison is made to rank the various ECO’s.

Alfa Firdaus, Creating the Standard

Finally, an Action Plan is created where certain
ECO’s are selected for implementation, and the
actual process of saving energy and saving
money begins.
To obtain the best information for a
successful energy cost control program, the
auditor must make some measurements during
the audit visit. The amount of equipment needed
depends on the type of energy-consuming
equipment used at the facility, and on the range
of potential ECO’s that might be considered. For
example, if waste heat recovery is being
considered as in palm oil mills, then the auditor
must take substantial temperature measurement
data from potential heat sources.
The auditor collecting data on energy use,
power demand and cost for at least the previous
12 months. Twenty-four months of data might be
necessary to adequately understand some types
of billing methods. However, in this study the
data is collected for only 12 months of period.
Bills for gas, oil, coal and electricity should
be compiled and examined to determine both the
amount of energy used and the cost of that
energy. This data should then be put into tabular
and graphic form to see what kind of patterns or
problems appear from the tables or graphs. Any
anomaly in the pattern of energy use raises the
possibility for some significant energy or cost
savings by identifying and controlling that
anomalous behavior. Sometimes an anomaly on
the graph or in the table reflects an error in
billing, but generally the deviation shows that
some activity is going on that has not been
noticed, or is not completely understood by the
palm oil company.
CREATING THE SEC STANDARD
SEC is a value that can be used as an
indicator to measure the level of optimization in
the use of energy. Indonesia as one of the
largest palm oil producing countries requires a
standard for energy intensity in the palm oil
industry. SEC in the palm oil mill is defined in the
amount of energy per unit of production
(kWh/kg). The classifying method that was used
in this study is the K-means cluster analysis with
the measurement samples in 14 palm oil mills for
12 months of period (168 data). SEC data used
in this study are as follows in Table 1 and Table
2. From the SEC data, we can made a scatter
pattern as depicted Figure 2.

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SINERGI Vol. 20, No. 1, Februari 2016: 9-13

Table 1. SEC Data for Plant 1 – 7
No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Plant 1
4.26
4.22
4.12
4.12
3.59
4.09
4.51
4.18
4.83
5.08
4.71
4.39

Plant 2
5.26
5.08
5.13
5.07
5.17
5.07
5.04
4.86
4.99
5.05
4.65
5.72

SEC (kWh/kg)
Plant 3
Plant 4
Plant 5
4.55
4.77
5.65
4.66
4.85
3.13
4.66
4.71
4.69
4.74
4.74
4.73
4.76
4.77
4.75
4.66
4.66
4.57
4.54
4.62
4.74
4.79
4.64
4.59
4.68
4.63
4.64
4.70
4.58
4.75
4.74
4.56
4.77
4.73
4.54
4.73

Plant 6
5.26
5.08
5.13
5.07
5.17
5.07
5.04
4.86
4.99
5.05
4.65
5.72

Plant 7
4.55
4.66
4.66
4.74
4.76
4.66
4.54
4.79
4.68
4.70
4.74
4.73

Table 2. SEC Data for Plant 8 – 14
No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Plant 8
4.78
4.99
4.62
5.78
7.21
8.53
7.72
5.91
5.41
5.42
4.95
5.52

Plant 9
4.74
4.76
4.73
4.79
4.75
4.88
4.75
4.84
4.73
4.76
4.95
4.76

SEC (kWh/kg)
Plant 10 Plant 11 Plant 12
6.38
4.82
4.52
6.44
5.08
4.74
5.17
5.12
4.73
6.01
5.18
4.62
6.15
5.06
4.61
5.99
5.28
4.65
6.13
5,79
4.63
5.85
5.27
4.55
6.21
5.08
4.58
6.21
4.75
4.51
6.11
4.85
4.52
6.35
4.84
4.43

Plant 13
6.16
6.18
6.03
6.06
6.15
6.04
6.01
5.78
6.84
6.05
5.65
6.12

Plant 14
5.32
5,38
5.18
5.16
5.36
5.45
5.81
5.72
5.88
5.75
5.85
5.24

Figure 2. SEC Scatter Pattern
With K-means cluster analysis as a
classifying method, at the initial stage we
classified existing data into 3 clusters with the
hope there would be three levels of the SEC;
those are low, medium and high level of SEC.
The initial cluster centers that were obtained are
as follows:
• Cluster 1: 8.53
• Cluster 2: 3.13
• Cluster 3: 5.85
After 6 times of iterating, we obtained the final

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cluster centers as follows:
• Cluster 1: 6.16
• Cluster 2: 4.01
• Cluster 3: 4.84
The member in the first cluster is 38 data, the
second cluster is 9 data and the third cluster is
121 data. Thus we can identify the SEC
standards for palm oil industry which amounted
to 4.84 kWh/kg with the low-value SEC (energy
efficient) at 4.01 kWh/kg and high-value SEC
(energy inefficient) at 6.16 kWh/kg.

Alfa Firdaus, Creating the Standard

ISSN: 1410-2331

CONCLUSION
Currently there are limited references
which can be used in formulating energy
conservation strategy and life cycle analysis.
SEC standards in the palm oil industry are
expected to be an early innovation towards the
making of energy efficient technology and life
cycle analysis in the palm oil industry.

REFERENCES
Boyd, G., Dutrow, E., Tunnessen, W., The
evolution of the ENERGY STAR 1 energy
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Cagan, J. and C. M. Vogel, Creating
Breakthrough Products. Prentice Hall, 2001.
(Cagan and Vogel, 2001)
Devoldere, T., Dewulf, W., Deprez, W., Willems,
B., Duflou, R.J., Improvement Potentials for
Energy Consumption in Discrete Part
Production Machines, in: Proceedings 14th
CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering
(Tokyo, Japan), 2007; pp.311–316.

Alfa Firdaus, Creating the Standard

Gutowski, T., Dahmus, J., et al, Electrical Energy
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Systems. 2007.
Moss, K.J., Energy Management in Buildings,
2nd edition. Taylor & Francis, London, 2006.
Overcash, M., Twomey, J., Kalla, D., Unit
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International Manufacturing Science and
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D,
(Ed.),
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