Case Study:

Advisor alerts Athlone Extrusions saving them penalties & charges by setting a Maximum Import Capacity.

Maximum Import Capacity - the challenges:

Athlone Extrusions Ltd is a privately owned, independent thermoplastic sheet extruder and compounder.

The modern manufacturing facility is located in the town of Athlone in Ireland and has 180 employees. The annual energy spend across the plant is in excess of €1.5m, therefore a Maximum Import Capacity was set to avoid needless financial penalties.

The main goal of the project was to consistently conserve energy spend and reduce energy costs in non-production hours within the PM3 Cleanroom 2. For example the Cleanroom plant became operational in Q4 of 2014. It is approximately 4,000ft² and was on average consuming 48kwh over the weekend with no occupancy.

The Cleanroom is a controlled environment and therefore pressure, temperature and humidity had to remain within specifications (there can be no effect on particulate levels within the room). All testing was carried out by an external vendor and were as follows: BMS controls were upgraded to regulate all changes within the Cleanroom. Also a heat pump was switched off for the summer months as it would consume 21kwh running at full load.

Benefits:

A factory space of some 14000 sq. metres houses the extrusion division consisting of fourteen sheet and film lines, all with co- extrusion or multi-layer capability, and the master batch and compounding division, containing seven compounding extruders. The plant capacity is currently 28,000 tonnes p.a. The annual energy spend across the plant is in excess of €1.5m, therefore a Maximum Import Capacity was set to avoid needless financial penalties.

Investment:

Athlone Extrusions deployed ResourceKraft’s energy monitoring system in January 2011 and their initial investment amounted to 10 electricity meters which were installed to track all active energy “Kwh” and reactive energy “varh” usage in the plant. The electrical installation was carried out by the onsite electrician and required little or no down time.

After 6 months, Athlone Extrusion was so impressed with ResourceKraft’s energy monitoring system that they decided to invest in an additional 7 electricity metres. They also decided to add oil and water metering to the system. This enabled Athlone Extrusions to further track their energy usage and to start tracking their oil and water consumption.

“We installed the ResourceKraft energy monitoring system in our manufacturing facility back in January 2011; the system has highlighted so much to us in the area of energy management.

Previously we were unaware of our breaches in our Maximum Import Capacity KVA level until we received the utility bill and discovered the penalties applied by our supplier of course it was too late to react then.”
MAINTENANCE MANAGER, ATHLONE EXTRUSIONS

Report card:

By deploying ResourceKraft’s energy monitoring system it has allowed Athlone Extrusions to eliminate needless financial penalties that were being previously incurred due to the Maximum Import Capacity levels that were being breached on a monthly bases prior to ResourceKraft’s deployment on site. Athlone Extrusion’s now have taken complete control of their loads throughout the manufacturing facility, costs have been cut and manufacturing output efficiencies have seen a huge boost throughout the plant. Also management have noticed with the presence of flat screen dashboards displaying energy usage in each area of the plant, staffs awareness and participation in energy conservation is now really encouraging.