Utilization of Electrical Energy in a large Industrial pharmaceutical

[Electricalboy123]

A company that I am going to be working in soon has reduced output significantly on its production lines and a number of production buildings within the facility have been closed indefinitely.

The output is currently 50% below peak and a three shift operational cycle has been reduced to two shifts (the night shift has been suspended).
The plant is also operating over 5 days as opposed to the 7 days that it was designed for.
What factors could be considered to obtain maximum utilization of electrical energy within the plant and the effects this might have on performance.

Additional Information:
Using large thermal process (Boiler for production)
A number of production plants within the facility have been shut down indefinitely.
There is one centralised compressed air facility designed for full operation.
Power factor correction has been designed to load.
The facility is fed by a parallel 20Kv feeders from the grid for supply security.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is not really my area of expertise but I need to
get my head around it quickly an. Much Thanks

 

[rbulsara]

That is a very generalized question. You need some experienced professional engineer or team of electrical and mechanical engineer to review your plant system, operations, load profile and energy costs. Electrical may be just one form of energy consumptions. All energy consumption needs to be reviewed as a whole. For example and depending on fuel costs, replacing a electric boiler say with oil or gas fired unit or vice versa could be more efficient or practical.

Fuel and energy costs vary greatly by geographical location.

Rafiq Bulsara

http://www.srengineersct.com

 

[Laplacian]

What specifically are you tasked with?

In my experience in a similar facility, running at reduced rates always resulted in reduced efficiency. The reason is the plant is designed for peak efficiency at peak load. The base plant operations must still be run, regardless of actual output. If the reduced rates will be permanent, the plant will have to get process designers involved to re-optimize base plant operations for reduced load (smaller machines, reduced infrastructure, etc.). This requires a major project and significant investment just to gain efficiency; typically not worth the capital. There may be some easy to implement changes, but the process design folks will have to determine how to optimize operations. This activity requires a team that is very familiar with plant operations.

 

[jghrist]

Contact the utility. There may be a minimum contract demand that can be reduced to lower utility bills.

 

[jraef]

Aside from the broad scope of your request, a small issue to consider is to completely cut off the compressed air supplies for the unused facilities. Don't assume that just because nobody is using air powered equipment in those facilities that you are not losing air, and air losses = energy. Cap / plug the pipes feeding them, you will eliminate all the additive losses from minor leaks throughout the systems.

I was working on a compressor energy saving program for a State medical institution campus a few years ago and they had a lot of mothballed buildings as programs were being phased out. We capped the air lines going to these buildings and immediately saved almost 10% of the compressed air energy costs. Nobody realized how leaky their system was.


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[Electricalboy123]

I apologise for not been able to specify my query with more detail but this is all the information I am working with at this moment in time. I have to compile an audit as would a plant operations and maintenance engineer with detailed measures of solely how to obtain maximum utilization of electrical energy within the plant and justify what effects this might have on company performance.
I will have access next week to survey the facility so what exactly should I be looking out for with the two objectives above in mind and what measures could/should be taken into consideration? This facility can be assumed to be your standard large Industrial pharmaceutical facility with:
Additional Information:

Using large thermal process (Boiler for production)
A number of production plants within the facility have been shut down indefinitely.
There is one centralised compressed air facility designed for full operation.
Power factor correction has been designed to load.
The facility is fed by a parallel 20Kv feeders from the grid for supply security.

Many thanks to the contribution from rbulsara, Laplacian, jghrist, jraef to date. Any further inputs from anyone will be hugely appreciated.
Thanks

 

[stevencress]

Call the power company. They probably have an industrial engineer or an ee who works with their industrial customers. He will be familiar with the electric rates. He can probably meet with you and give you some good ideas.

 

[oldfieldguy]

Careful assessment is needed. You certainly consider shutting down process equipment, but you need to think about HVAC to preserve sensitive equipment, a certain amount of energy needed for security lighting, environmental considerations like sump and wastewater pumps, etc.

After that assessment is made, then consider how to supply power to do this. do you need to keep a 3 MVA transformer hot to feed a 100 kVA load?

After you've done all those, then you start having a better idea of your power requirements for your partially mothballed facility and you can begin talking to the utility company about lower charges based on new load/demand figures.

old field guy