Client case

Increasing productivity and boosting factory output

The client in this study is a leading manufacturer of packing materials in the African continent. One of their units produces glass bottles and jars for the packaging of wine, soft drinks etc. For the production the plant has 3 furnaces and 9 lines with a total capacity of 300,000 tons of glass. However, due to poor quality of the utility power supply, the maximum capacity could not be achieved and demand could not be met. Even short interruptions in the utility power supply disturb the manufacturing process for longer period of times. Time is consumed by cleaning and restarting the process. Also, such interruptions cause high cost of scrap.

Projectinformation

UPS type:	Dynamic UPS
Power module:	2000kVA
No-break rating:	2000kVA
Engine rating:	Standby rated at 1,670 kVa
Phase 1 install:	10 modules
Total install:	10 modules in total
Operating voltage:	6.6KV / 50Hz
Configuration:	Single
Housing:	Indoor, dedicated energy building

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Client case: Increasing productivity and boosting factory output

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Project Challenge

The challenge was to find a power protection solution that could not only cover the intelligent controls of the plant, but also the higher power furnaces. Besides that the plant is running on a 6.6kV network. So applying standard static UPS units was not a possibility, provided that a large scale (20MVA) UPS solution was required on Medium Voltage level.

Besides that there was no space available in the plant. Besides the size, also any UPS system that would be proposed would have to be very robust and suitable for an industrial application with a lot of variation in the load current.

Project Solution

Together with the client and the local partner a turnkey solution with diesel rotary UPS systems was developed, including design, installation, commissioning and maintenance. First of all a centralized solution was chosen, upstream in the 6.6kV network. To that purpose a dedicated energy building was designed. In the energy building 10 units of 2MVA Diesel rotary UPS units were placed. The DRUPS unit not only provides for back-up power in case of black-outs, but also provides for power conditioning.

This means that the load power factor gets compensated so that the utility power provider “sees” a higher power factor. This generally reduces the electricity bill. Besides that the DRUPS units stabilize the incoming voltage to a tolerance of +/- 1%. To the manufacturing plant receives stable, clean and continuous power. In case the utility completely fails, the Diesel engine on the DRUPS unit takes over and provides the power to the plant. A purpose designed SCADA system provides for the monitoring and control of the system, either on site or from a remote location.

By a special adaptation to the alternator the HITEC engineers found a way to further improve the efficiency to over 97%. and this without using the bypass or reducing the protection levels of the critical load.

Customer Experience

With the Hitec Power Protection solution, the client was able to boost productivity and output of the plant and could meet the demand of their customers and increase their profitability at the same time. Another project where Hitec lives up to slogan: Power and People to Rely on.