Now is the perfect opportunity for each one of us to look around our plant and investigate how we can become more efficient and cost effective. With order backlogs reducing, you should invest more time in opportunities which will still impact your company’s bottom line……Energy Savings.
On average, 65% of your plant’s energy bill is apportioned to the electric motor. Using Variable Speed Drives (VSD), motors speeds can be controlled according to demand, making it possible to save up to 70% in energy consumption. Even with these savings, still only 10% of motors are equipped with a VSD.
Think of the entire pump & fan applications at your plant being controlled by valves and dampers. Imagine trying to regulate the speed of your car by keeping one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. Running a motor at full speed while throttling has the same effect. Of that estimated 65% of energy used by electric motors, some 20% is lost by wasteful throttling mechanisms. Remember that a 20% reduction of flow in an application will reduce the energy it consumes by 51%.
Diagram 1.1. demonstrates the power required by a VSD to provide % flow versus the power required by other control methods. This illustrates the potential power savings by using a VSD.
Motors:
Motor efficiency is also extremely important as running costs outweigh purchase costs 100:1 – for every €1 you spend buying the motor, you will spend €100 running it over its life. Few users realise this. Few people also realise that a motor will consume its own purchase price in energy costs within 30 days if it is running continuously – irrespective of its power rating. Investing a little more in initial purchase price to get a higher efficiency motor can pay back that investment many times over.
Accelerated Capital Allowance:
The Accelerated Capital Allowance (ACA) is a new tax incentive introduced by the government to encourage investment in energy efficient technology. The ACA lets you cut your company’s taxable income by 100% of the capital cost of eligible energy-efficient equipment in the first year of purchase. Consider the example in Figure 1.2. which illustrates the cash-flow benefit if you were to buy equipment worth €100,000. With the standard capital allowance for plant and machinery, the tax saving is spread equally over eight years and therefore also subject to typical monetary devaluation. With the ACA, it is all recovered in the first year and as such results in direct cash flow benefits without loss of value over time.
All ABB VSD’s and EFF1 motors qualify for the ACA scheme. Please visit www.sei.ie/aca
Energy Audit:
Only a few industrial systems are optimally dimensioned from the point of view of energy efficiency. In order for a company to reduce its energy costs, it needs to evaluate how it uses energy. An energy audit is a systematic examination of key pump and fan applications that includes the monitoring of energy consumed both before and after the change to variable speed drives.
Energy Audit Steps:
- Hold initial meeting
- Define scope of audit
- Perform walk-through of premises
- Monitor selected equipment
- ABB produce energy savings report
If you would like ABB Ireland to carry out an energy audit please contact John Conboy at our offices on the Belgard Road, Tallaght, Dublin 24.
John Conboy
Sales Engineer
Drives & Motors
+353 (0)1 405 7345
+353 (0)87 905 9649