Case Study 2: Power Quality Monitoring of Aerospace Sector SME with very high energy costs

Objectives

To monitor and then analyse the power usage and quality of a medium sized aerospace engineer in the North West of the UK. The site had continued to suffer from poor power quality and higher than expected energy bills so SIG systems were asked to monitor the incoming three phase power for quality and then also the load to understand where and how their energy was being utilised and what could be done to make this more efficient.

SOLUTION

SIG retrofitted their Insight devices directly within the manufacturer’s electrical distribution board. This enabled live half hourly energy usage from the main incomer.

The various areas of the factory were then sub metered to enable for more granular understanding of the power usage was available to the facilities manager and senior management team.

OUTCOMES

Easy and Quick Install

System installed during one nightshift to enable no lost operating hours within the factory and 100% success rate of reporting back the power information from the main incomer and each factory area to our online platform.

Reduced Energy Usage

The analysis of the usage was able to highlight an issue with the machines being left in idle mode during closedowns for the factory. This was initially seen as a time saving mechanism to avoid wasted time at the start of new shifts but the data was able to quantify exactly the cost of leaving these machines on. This lead to a 15% saving in month by month energy usage and a ROI of under 6 weeks (slightly expedited given the massive increase in Pence per KWH!).

Further Savings Made Possible - Power Factor Correction and Voltage Optimisation

Further analysis of power quality using our online platform was able to highlight that the site had both power factor and high voltage issues that were costing the site around £50k per year. SIG systems were able to spec up, install and monitor the power quality improvement equipment to ensure they were working as expected. This was able to deliver £30k per year savings even after all the equipment was paid.