Aluminium Industry
EPALME is an aluminium recycler. The factory is currently producing aluminium billets with a state-of-the-art casting technology, using pure aluminium ingots and recyclable aluminium scrap. Its annual production capacity exceeds 30.000 tons.
Legend:
- Retro & Commisioning
- Led lights
- Heat retracement & steam
For EPALME, electrical energy is one of the major expense factors in the production line.
Their management team was looking for a total energy management solution, as well as energy efficiency services to implement a sustainable development strategy to maximize company’s profits.
Solution
Our engineers performed a thorough walk-thru audit, surveying the existing equipment and measuring the key energy loads.
By integrating DTWISE data analytics platform we unified the independent systems of the production line and furthermore we managed to have access in real-time multi-dimensional data, defining the absolute energy profile.
The load profile analysis identified the shredding equipment and the melting furnaces as the main energy consumers. The motor drive which controls the air inflow in the melting furnace was accountable for the 15% of the daily general load. We proposed a variable speed drive control (inverter) for the motor in order to achieve reduction of active and reactive energy 1.
With an annual energy consumption of more than 4.2 GWh and a 24/7 peak demand of 900 kVA the proposed intervention had a high impact on the energy consumption reduction. The impact was 40% reduction of the specific load 2 and 6% on the overall factory consumption.
Additionally, major part of the production line equipment's booting was not fully controlled, leading to a random load pattern with several peaks. Our energy engineers proposed a substantial power arbitrage system to smoothen and optimize the load demand curve, which furtherly reduced energy consumption by 12%.
Factory Info
- Location: Viotia, Greece
- Project Status: Production Line Monitoring
- Average Annual Electrical Energy Consumption: 4.2GWh
- Annual Electrical Energy Cost: 400.000 €
Achievements
In 2 years we have helped the factory to reduce the general load by 10.5% and to reach a substantial total energy consumption reduction of 18% 3. The ROI for the energy monitoring services was 9 months, resulting in parallel in 80.000€ annual savings.
- ROI: 9 months
- Annual savings: 750MWh, exceeding 18% of the total electrical energy consumption of the factory
- Expected annual savings: >80.000€
- Annual CO2 avoided: 680 tons of CO2