Footprints showcases and celebrates inspiring stories about individuals and organizations in the manufacturing sector, doing their bit to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The 5th event of Footprints was held on Friday, 24th November 2017 in Welcom Hotel, Chennai and the theme of this edition is \”Celebrating Climate Change Mitigation in Manufacturing Industry – Energy Monitoring & Control\”. Click here for the complete details about the event.
Mr. Jaishankar.T, – General Manager, UCAL Fuel Systems Ltd, Chennai was one among the presenters and his presentation brief is given below
He started with a formal introduction about UCAL and its various products that they contribute to automobile sectors. Their company policy towards energy conservation has two goals
(a)Reduction of cost/unit
(b)Reduction of unit consumption
Due to the interrupted power supply from the grid, UCAL depended more on diesel gensets for their own internal power generation and their generation cost was around Rs 12-13/unit. In order to cut down their power cost from generation, they planned for going to a dedicated feeder and third-party power procurement. He mentioned that they have invested around Rs 45 lakhs for dedicated feeders and they have their payback in 6 months time.
Coming to the energy monitoring methodologies followed in UCAL, he mentioned that they have connected SCADA based monitoring and connected energy meters at feeder point, line point and usage point for continuous monitoring. They have used Thyristor controller for their Pressure Die Casting (PDC) electrical furnace (45 kW capacity) to reduce unwanted power consumption. Also, they have built some reservoir with a booster in their dedicated compressor machines which stores compressed air and avoids unnecessary compressor operation.
He mentioned about the use of LED lights replacing normal tube lights and use of VFD motors and drives. Overall with the help of these above energy monitoring and control measures in their process plants altogether they were able to save 10.39 lakh units of power and Rs 3.5 crores in a year. Right now they are executing a trial run on Heat Pumps, planning to replace the electrical heaters in their component washing machines, which account to about 600 kW connected load. This Heat Pumps can reduce 40% of their power consumption
At last, he mentioned that their company overall energy (power) cost is 5% in 13-14 and their target is to bring it down to 3% in the coming financial year, which is on its way of progress.
Q&A Session
Questions were raised on their grid power quality for which they have shifted to the dedicated feeder and their measures towards thermal energy monitoring, which he said it yet to be planned. Questions were asked about their individual machine level power monitoring and he mentioned that as of now only PDC furnace was individually monitored since it is the highest power consuming device in the plant and further plans for monitoring is on its way. Also, they are planning to work on SEC of a product in coming future
Click here for the complete details about the event.