Starting in late 2004, engineers at Cascades began a program to monitor and optimize power consumption at several of their plants. An integral piece of this project was enabling real-time intelligence at the equipment via the AppSrvCE Historian, a new embedded device from Prosoft Technology that includes OSIsoft’s ECHO Historian. The AppSrvCE Historian connects directly to local Allen-Bradley Flex I/O to monitor machine operations. The data is stored locally on the AppSrvCE Historian and then accessed across a second Ethernet Network connection to synchronize the data with Cascades PI Server. This is part of an overall trend towards intelligent devices that use historical data to optimize at the source, increase value, and connect to larger systems. Cascades expects less than a 1.5-year payback on the equipment investment for this project. The savings will come from improved operating procedures and energy utilization. Cascades is Canada’s third largest paper company with a market capitalization of C$1.3 billion, operating over 150 facilities in North America and Europe.