A 200 hp rotary screw compressor running 6,000 hours a year at the 2025 US industrial rate of 8.62 cents per kWh costs about $70,000 a year in electricity, and over ten years it costs about $1.0M, of which $700,000 is the power bill. The DOE’s own tip sheet says about 10% of a typical plant’s electricity goes to making compressed air, that it takes 7 to 8 hp at the motor to deliver 1 hp of air at 100 psig, and that 76% of the machine’s lifetime cost is electricity. This piece covers what the number is worth nationally, what the CAGI sheets say a kW of air should cost, what 2,962 DOE leak audits paid back, how the VSD retrofit pencils with and without a rebate, what heat recovery is worth, how public buyers actually paid for compressors, and how to buy one.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from CAGI performance data sheets, EIA-861M, the DOE ITAC database and USAspending awards; as of April 2026)
The three stacks are $977,585 for a fixed-speed machine leaking 20% of its capacity, $883,577 for a VSD machine with the same leaks, and $800,753 for the VSD machine with leaks cut to 10%, so the leak program is worth $83,000 over ten years and the drive is worth $94,000, before any rebate. Every input is in data/assumptions.csv with its source.
Where the 10% Comes From
The 10% is old and it holds up. DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program printed it in August 2004: a DOE survey found that for a typical industrial facility approximately 10% of the electricity consumed is for generating compressed air, and for some facilities 30% or more. The number underneath is the Xenergy motor-systems assessment for DOE, which measured compressed air at 15.8% of all manufacturing motor-system energy, 27.7% in chemicals, and 4.6% in paper, in a year when motor systems were 679 billion kWh and 23% of all US electricity sold.
Run that forward. EIA’s 2022 Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey, released August 2025, puts machine drive at 1,652 of the 3,182 trillion Btu of net electricity manufacturers used, 52%. Compressed air at 15.8% of machine drive is 8.2% of manufacturing electricity, about 76 TWh, and at the 2025 US industrial average of 8.62 cents per kWh that is $6.6B a year. Take DOE’s 10% of a typical plant instead and it is 93 TWh and $8.0B. The Cooling Roadmap carries compressed air as the largest cooling-adjacent electrical load in a plant because it is, and because it is the one with no analyst coverage and the fastest paybacks.
Source: EIA-861M via Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book
At 900,000 kWh a year the system costs $58,950 in Texas at 6.55 cents, $76,680 in Ohio at 8.52, $91,260 in Illinois at 10.14, and $194,580 in California at 21.62. The US industrial average rose from 6.81 cents in 2019 to 8.62 in 2025, 27%, which is why a leak that was worth fixing in 2019 is worth fixing sooner now. The Large-Load Cost Table has the rate and capacity line for each of these states for anyone siting a plant.
What a kW of Air Should Cost: 62 CAGI Sheets
Every rotary screw compressor sold in the US by a Compressed Air and Gas Institute participant ships with a standard data sheet: rated capacity in acfm, full-load pressure, total package input power in kW, and the ratio, specific power in kW per 100 cfm, measured to ISO 1217 Annex C and verified by CAGI’s third-party program. It is the closest thing this industry has to a miles-per-gallon sticker, and the sheets are public on the manufacturers’ sites. We pulled 62 of them from Atlas Copco, Chicago Pneumatic, ELGi, Gardner Denver and Ingersoll Rand at 115 to 130 psig and put them in data/cagi-sheets.csv.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from CAGI performance data sheets published by five manufacturers, dated 2019 to 2025)
The spread inside a size class is wider than the spread between classes: 175 to 215 hp machines run 17.6 to 20.1 kW per 100 cfm, a 14% gap between the best and worst sheet at the same pressure. The 15 to 30 hp class runs 20.5 to 22.8 and the 120 to 150 hp class 17.3 to 20.4. At 600 acfm and 6,000 hours, one kW per 100 cfm is 36,000 kWh and $3,100 a year at the US rate, so the 2.5 kW per 100 cfm between the ELGi EG 160 at 20.05 and the Ingersoll Rand RS132i at 17.6 is $7,800 a year at full load, before anyone talks about drives. The sheet is the first number to ask for and the Quote Check tool takes the kW per 100 cfm as an input next to the price.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from CAGI VSD data sheets: Atlas Copco Sep 2025, Ingersoll Rand Dec 2024, ELGi Jun 2020, Gardner Denver Jan 2023, Chicago Pneumatic Mar 2021)
The VSD sheets publish five or six operating points instead of one. The Ingersoll Rand RS160n goes from 18.15 kW per 100 cfm at 1,053 acfm to 17.17 at 564 acfm and back up to 19.12 at 224 acfm; the Atlas Copco GA 160 VSDs runs 17.8 at 842 acfm, 18.1 at 417 and 19.9 at 204. The curve is flat where a plant actually lives, 40% to 100% of capacity, and the 60 hp and 75 hp units are 3 kW per 100 cfm worse across the whole range than the 200 hp ones, which is the case for one big machine over two small ones when the load allows it.
The Leak Audit: 2,962 DOE Recommendations
DOE has paid university teams to walk small and mid-size plants since 1976, and the Industrial Training and Assessment Centers publish every assessment and every recommendation with its cost, savings and whether the plant did it: 23,155 assessments and 170,142 recommendations as of the September 2026 database. We took the FY2015 to FY2025 recommendations with a stated cost and a positive saving. Of the 5,817 assessments in that window, 73% carried at least one compressed-air recommendation, which is a fair proxy for how many plants have not looked.
Source: US DOE Industrial Training and Assessment Centers database via Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book
Of the 2,962 leak recommendations (ARC 2.4236), 39.8% pay back in under three months, 22.0% in three to six, 17.6% in six to twelve, and 0.7% take more than five years. The medians are a $1,204 repair for a $3,267 annual saving, 42,600 kWh, a 0.35-year payback, and 70% of plants implemented it, the highest implementation rate of any compressed-air measure in the database. For plants with 300 to 500 employees the medians are a $1,697 repair and a $5,236 saving. Only 3.8% of the leak recommendations record a utility rebate, against 20.8% of the adjustable-speed-drive recommendations, so the leak program is the one measure here that does not need a program administrator.
Source: US DOE Industrial Training and Assessment Centers database via Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book
Lowering the header pressure is the cheapest line in the database: 1,559 recommendations, a median cost of $200, a median saving of $2,063, a 0.10-year payback, and half the plants did it. The DOE sourcebook’s rule is 1% of power for every 2 psi of discharge pressure near 100 psig, so 10 psi on the worked plant’s 134.9 kW average is 40,500 kWh and $3,490 a year. Upgrading compressor controls (451 recommendations) costs $6,534 for $6,325 a year at 1.25 years and only 38% implement it; buying a right-sized compressor (299) costs $23,000 for $9,523 a year, 2.5 years, 43%. Two thirds of the money DOE’s engineers find in a compressor room costs less than $2,000 to take.
The VSD Retrofit, With and Without a Rebate
Now the worked plant: 400 people, one 200 hp class machine at 125 psig, average demand 600 acfm, 6,000 hours a year. ITAC plants with 300 to 500 employees (494 of them since FY2018) report a median $598,853 electricity bill, 10.3 GWh, and $214,152 of demand charges, so the compressor is 12% to 14% of that plant’s kWh, right on DOE’s number.
The fixed-speed baseline comes straight off the sheet. The ELGi EG 160-125 draws 170.46 kW at its 850 acfm rating and 49.43 kW at zero flow, so a load/unload machine at 600 acfm averages 0.706 × 170.46 + 0.294 × 49.43 = 134.9 kW, and that is a floor because it ignores blowdown and the receiver. The VSD alternative at 600 acfm interpolates to 103.3 kW on the RS160n sheet and 106.8 kW on the GA 160 VSDs sheet, mean 105.1 kW. The saving is 29.8 kW, 178,700 kWh, $15,400 a year at 8.62 cents, $11,700 in Texas, $18,100 in Illinois and $38,600 in California.
| Line | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed-speed average input, 600 acfm, load/unload | 134.9 kW | ELGi EG 160 sheet: 0.706 × 170.46 + 0.294 × 49.43 |
| Same, Atlas Copco GA 160s baseline (40.7 kW zero flow) | 123.0 kW | 0.601 × 177.6 + 0.399 × 40.7 |
| VSD input at 600 acfm (mean of RS160n and GA 160 VSDs) | 105.1 kW | CAGI part-load points |
| Saving vs ELGi baseline | 29.8 kW, $15,401/yr | 6,000 h, 8.62 c/kWh |
| Saving vs Atlas Copco baseline | 16.2 kW, $8,390/yr | same |
| Leaks at 20% of 850 acfm | 170 acfm, 34.1 kW, $17,629/yr | 20.05 kW per 100 cfm |
| Cut leaks to 10% | 17.0 kW, $8,814/yr | DOE sourcebook target |
| Header pressure down 10 psi | $3,488/yr | 1% per 2 psi |
| Heat recovery, 2,000 heating hours | 427 MMBtu, $2,757/yr gas | 85% heat, 70% recovered, $5.17/MMBtu, 80% furnace |
The baseline row decides the case. Against the cheapest fixed-speed sheet the drive pays back its assumed $30,000 premium in 1.9 years unaided; against an Atlas Copco GA 160s that unloads to 40.7 kW, the saving halves and the payback is 3.6 years. This is why the Xcel Minnesota program funds a supply-side study before it will rebate a compressor of 50 hp or more: $2,000 plus $20 per hp for a 50 to 199 hp system, the whole study cost covered if you fix 75% of the leaks it finds, and up to $500 per peak kW saved on the custom side. Xenergy found adjustable-speed drives on 1.7% of compressed-air systems in 1998; the 20.8% rebate flag on VFD recommendations in the ITAC data says the utilities have been paying for the catch-up ever since.
Source: Focus on Energy 2026 summary; Ameren Illinois 2026 industrial application; Consumers Energy 2026 incentive application; Xcel Energy Colorado and Minnesota compressed-air sheets; Efficiency Maine; JHFoster; Fluid-Aire Dynamics
On a 200 hp machine the prescriptive rebate is $15,000 in Wisconsin at Focus on Energy’s $75 per hp, $25,000 at Ameren Illinois’s $125 per hp, capped at 80% of the drive’s cost, $34,000 at Consumers Energy’s $170 per hp for a single compressor running 6,000 hours or more, and $44,000 at the $220 per hp that ComEd’s trade allies publish for integrated VSD compressors up to 200 hp, a figure ComEd’s own page does not print. In Michigan and Illinois the rebate is larger than the drive premium; in Wisconsin it halves the payback to a year. The 200 hp comparison behind the paywall ranks the eight sheets and the seven programs side by side.
Heat Recovery Is a Rebate Play
The sourcebook says 80 to 93% of a compressor’s electrical input leaves as heat and 50 to 90% of that is recoverable from an air-cooled screw package with nothing more than ducting and a thermostatic damper. For the worked plant’s 105 kW VSD over 2,000 heating hours that is about 125,000 kWh of heat, 427 MMBtu, and at the 2025 US industrial gas price of $5.17 per MMBtu through an 80% furnace it displaces $2,757 of gas a year. ITAC’s 663 heat-recovery recommendations have a median cost of $6,000 and a median saving of $5,708, 1.27 years, and only 23% of plants do it, the lowest implementation rate of any measure here; the ones that pay are the ones with electric heat or a process water load.
What changes the arithmetic is that the utilities pay per horsepower, not per therm. Focus on Energy pays $75 per hp for compressed air heat recovery, up to 50% of project cost, Ameren Illinois $50 per hp for ducting air-cooled compressor exhaust into space normally heated by gas, and Consumers Energy $50 per hp for its gas customers. On 200 hp that is $10,000 to $15,000 against a ducting job that ITAC prices at a median $6,000, which is a project that pays for itself the day the rebate check clears.
What Public Buyers Paid
Nobody publishes transaction prices for industrial compressors, so we did what the Public Bid-Tab Price Book does for transformers and chillers and read the public record. Federal contract awards on USAspending under product code 4310 and the compressor keywords, plus the council records we could reach, give 38 rows in data/compressor-public-awards.csv, of which 23 are a single rotary screw package with a stated horsepower and no dryer or installation.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from USAspending.gov contract awards)
The 23 awards run from $387 to $1,628 per hp with a median of $637 (n=23, May 2022 to February 2026). The spread is not size: GSA bought a 50 hp, 220 cfm rotary screw through Grainger for $37,690 in February 2026 and a 50 hp, 460 V rotary screw through the same Grainger schedule for $81,398 in June 2025, a 2.2x gap on one line description, which is the Grainger pricing story in one product class. The big machines clustered low: a Kaeser CSD 90, a 125 hp frame, for $57,835 to the Army in 2023 at $463 per hp, an Ingersoll Rand RS55i-A125 at 75 hp for $39,100 to the Air Force in 2022, and a 100 hp inverter-type compressor for $52,190 through DLA in 2022, the only VSD unit in the set, at $522 per hp. Add a dryer and the number moves: a 100 hp air-cooled rotary screw with dryer was $128,080 for the Bureau of Reclamation in Nevada in 2024.
Municipal records show the service tail. Riverside Public Utilities paid Atlas Copco $154,628 for a compressor replacement with a five-year extended warranty at its Clearwater plant in October 2021; Silicon Valley Power authorized up to $1,500,000 for two compressors, two dryers and preventive maintenance with an optional ten-year extension in September 2025; and Phoenix bought a Sullair 1809E for $13,748 after sending the RFQ to three vendors and getting one bid in 2019. The BLS index for air and gas compressor manufacturing rose 55% from January 2020 to March 2026 and 6.2% in the twelve months to March 2026, so a 2022 award is 10% to 15% under today’s quote.
Source: BLS PPI WPU1141 and PCU333912333912 via Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book
The compressor index outran the pumps-and-compressors group (52%) and its 2023 step, from 276 to 328 in twelve months, is the same one the Lead-Time Monitor saw in switchgear and transformers. The federal efficiency floor that landed in the middle of this, DOE’s January 2020 compressor standard with compliance required from January 10, 2025, is the reason CAGI added isentropic efficiency to its sheets; DOE proposed in May 2025 to withdraw the determination that compressors are covered equipment at all, with comments closed July 15, 2025, so the sheet, not the rule, is what protects the buyer.
How to Buy a Compressor, and What to Do Monday
Buy the sheet before the machine. Ask every bidder for the CAGI data sheet at your pressure, and if a bidder does not participate in the CAGI program treat the missing sheet the way the OEM Disclosure Scorecard treats a missing lead time: as the answer. Convert kW per 100 cfm to dollars with your rate and hours; at 600 acfm, 6,000 hours and 8.62 cents each kW per 100 cfm is $3,100 a year and $31,000 over ten. Ask for the zero-flow kW on the fixed-speed sheet and the part-load points on the VSD sheet, because the load/unload floor is what the drive competes against. Then price the package the way the Quote Check tool does, at $/hp against the $387 to $1,628 public band, and write the RFQ the way our capital-equipment RFQ piece lays out, with the dryer, receiver, startup and first-year service as separate lines so the $37,690 and $81,398 versions of the same 50 hp machine cannot hide in one number. Check the Lead-Time Monitor for the drive and the motor before promising a turnaround date; the Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule will tell you whether the rebate’s pre-approval window closes before the machine lands.
Monday, in this order. Pull the last twelve bills and mark the compressor’s share; if you cannot, put a $300 clamp meter on the feeder for a week, because the ITAC data says 73% of plants have not. Walk the plant on a quiet shift with an ultrasonic gun and tag every leak; the median repair is $1,200 for $3,300 a year and pays back in four months. Drop the header pressure 2 psi at a time until someone complains, then go back up 2: the median cost is $200. If you are in PJM, put the compressors on the receiver during the five summer peak hours that set the capacity charge: 30 kW off the peak-load contribution is $3,400 a year at the Met-Ed 2026/27 rate of $113.65 per kW on the PJM Capacity Charge Estimator, and the same 30 kW nominated into ELRP is another $3,400. Then, and only then, get the VSD quote with the sheet, the rebate pre-approval and the spares and service terms attached, and put the MRO basket filters and separator elements into the same negotiation.
Behind the paywall: the eight 175 to 215 hp CAGI sheets ranked by kW at 600 acfm, where the gap between the best VSD and the worst fixed-speed machine is $163,000 of electricity over ten years, and the seven rebate programs ranked by what they pay per hp, in the Public Bid-Tab Price Book.