2004-09-27 - Electricity prices are on an upward trend. Most recently, PowerGen has warned that up to £70bn will have to be invested in new generation facilities, leading to a 20% increase in electricity prices. With the average SME spending £23,000 annually on electricity, this alone would mean an additional £4,600 increase in costs. But that’s just the start of the bad news, according to some pundits.
Environmental legislation and gas price hikes have led investment bank UBS Warburg to issue dire warnings of a rise in wholesale electricity prices of 80% by 2010, with dwindling North Sea gas supplies making the UK increasingly dependent on expensive imports.
With all this in mind, it is startling that so little is being done to cut energy costs. It’s hard enough to find the person who pays the electricity bill in the average company, harder still to find anyone who is interested in how much it actually is. The Action Energy Campaign from the Carbon Trust estimates that SMEs are haemorrhaging more than £1billion every year in wasted energy – an estimated £7,000 per business annually.
A lack of energy efficient controls on electric motors is one of the main reasons. Electric motors use two-thirds of all the electricity in industry, with about 10 million of them powering UK businesses. Yet, across the country, inefficient throttling mechanisms are restricting the output of pumps and fans while the motors behind them still work away at full speed.
Luckily there is a solution. A variable speed drive can reduce the speed of a motor to match the demand, dramatically reducing energy costs compared with having the motor working needlessly against a restriction.
Pumps and fans become particularly lean when their speed is reduced. Thanks to the laws of physics, the power consumed by the impellor is cut both by the pressure drop and the reduction in flow.
This means that a modest 20% reduction in speed leads to a massive 50% reduction in energy consumption.
The use of inefficient mechanical devices to control flow is partly down to old habits and partly down to purchase cost, but a variable speed drive pays for itself many times over.
So before dismissing energy savings as “too little, too late”, remember energy savings aren’t just about turning the lights off when you go home. Electric motors are likely to remain your greatest drain on electricity for the foreseeable future. The question is what you intend to do about it.
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