Articles
Practical guides to reducing compressed air costs
Leaks, pressure, compressors, storage, controls and system performance — with worked examples showing what a change can save, what it can't, and what to check before you make it.
2026-07
What a 3 mm leak really costs — and how to price a leak survey
A 3 mm hole is a fitting you can't hear over plant noise. Simulated on an average small plant, it costs €2,037 a year — here's the physics, and what that means for leak survey economics.
+€2,037/yr
2026-07
VSD retrofit: run the numbers on your plant before the vendor does
Variable speed saves 21% on the demo plant's half-load profile — and roughly nothing on a plant running flat out. The difference is your load profile, and you can simulate it.
−€6,487/yr
2026-07
Lowering your pressure setpoint: free money, one catch
Dropping the band 0.8 bar saves €2,472/yr with zero capex. It also burns half a bar of point-of-use margin — and whether that's fine or fatal depends on your most sensitive machine.
−€2,472/yr
2026-07
Is a bigger air receiver worth it? An honest zero — and the €4,000 setting nobody checks
A 5× bigger tank saves exactly no energy. What it does do is stretch the unload pauses past your run-on timer — and that setting, not the tank, is where the money is.
±€0 … −€4,355/yr
Coming next
- Where does your compressed air actually go? The air balance
- Benchmark your compressor room: kW per m³/min in 10 minutes
- Why point-of-use pressure is lower than you think
- What does your plant consume at 2 a.m.? The night-leak baseline
Every table above regenerates from the live engine
Change the tariff, change the hours, change the plant — the same engine re-runs the numbers on your inputs. The professionals we work with do exactly that, on their own plants.
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