Compressed air is the most expensive utility in most plants on a per-unit-of-work basis, and the one nobody meters. It is also the measure with the fastest payback we see in industrial buildings, and the one almost no Canadian consultancy sells by name.
Generating compressed air converts a large amount of electricity into a small amount of useful work and a great deal of heat. That makes every inefficiency in the system expensive, and compressed air systems accumulate inefficiency quietly: a leak makes no alarm, an over-set pressure looks like caution, and a compressor cycling unloaded all night looks like a compressor that is off.
None of the usual fixes require buying a compressor. That is what makes this the measure to do before any capital decision about air — including the decision to buy a bigger machine, which a corrected system frequently turns out not to need.
| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Leak load | Ultrasonic survey through the distribution system, plus a no-production load test: what the plant draws when nothing is using air is, by definition, leakage. This gives you a figure for your plant rather than a published average. |
| System pressure | What the system is set to against what the highest genuine demand actually needs. Pressure is often set for a single tool that has since gone, and every unnecessary unit of pressure costs energy across the whole plant. |
| Part-load and unloaded running | Logged over a week including nights and weekends. An unloaded compressor still draws a substantial share of full-load power. |
| Control and sequencing | Multiple compressors fighting each other, or all modulating instead of one trimming, is the commonest control fault in a multi-machine room. |
| Storage and demand events | Whether receiver capacity is absorbing demand spikes, or whether the compressors are chasing them. |
| End uses that should not be on air | Open blowing, cooling, cabinet purging and vacuum generation are frequently done with compressed air because it is there, at many times the cost of the right tool. |
| Heat recovery potential | Most of the electricity becomes heat. Whether any of it can usefully displace space or process heating is a question worth asking once, properly. |
A week of logged power and flow data costs very little and ends every disagreement about whether the system is oversized, whether the leaks matter, and whether the night load is real. We would rather install loggers for a week than write an opinion.
Compressed air savings are electrical, so they route through IESO Save on Energy rather than Enbridge. Two routes matter:
Verified 3 October 2026. Figures and sources on the programme index.
It is tempting to fix the leaks you can hear while the paperwork is in progress. Do that and the baseline is gone, along with the pay-for-performance incentive on the savings you just made. Log first, apply, then fix.
We do not sell, install or service compressors, dryers, piping or controls, and we take no commission from anyone who does. The survey tells you what to buy, in enough detail to tender it, and then we are out of the commercial path. See why we sell no equipment.
The logged survey runs on production. The no-production load test needs a short window with the plant down and the compressors running — usually a planned shutdown or a weekend. It is the single most useful hour of the whole exercise.
Then this survey is the cheapest second opinion available, and it is frequently the one that avoids the purchase. Leak load and demand events routinely account for what looks like insufficient capacity. If you do need a bigger machine, the survey sizes it against measured demand instead of nameplate guesswork.
It is a system-specific study, and it can sit inside a Level 2 or Level 3 industrial audit or stand alone. If you are applying to a programme that specifies a report outline, tell us which before the work starts and we write to it.
Related
Request a proposal
A compliance deadline, an incentive application, a financing requirement, or a capital plan. Tell us which, and we will tell you what you need and what it will cost — as a fixed fee, before any work starts.
If you do not need an audit, we will say so.