Custom Built Triple Inverter For 43% Energy Saving

The Challenge

One of our clients, a meat processing abattoir, had an 18.5 kW triple washdown system which was just controlled by an on/off switch. This was causing the pumps to wear out and fail regularly, as well as wasting a lot of energy when the water feed was not required.

The issue encountered from the pumps failing regularly was wasting the customers time and product line time. The factory was also losing out on money due to an excess use of electricity.

Our Solution

Our solution was to provide a custom-built triple inverter driven control panel with three 18.5kW Danfoss inverters to control the existing pumps. We installed a pressure transducer on the discharge side of the pumps which regulated the speed of the pumps according to pressure and demand. The controller had an inbuilt PLC unit which alternated duty between the pumps and provided warning signals.

We designed, built and installed the new panel in place of the old panel. Our new panel was programmed and prepared in our workshop before we removed the existing control panel onsite. This minimised downtime for the customer, as well as reducing any potential problems that may have arose on site.

The Result

As a result, our client benefited from a 43% saving on energy usage. This was due to the fact the pumps were only running when necessary and depending on the number of pressure guns in operation the system would adapt to the required pressure to meet demand.

The system was designed to meet the demand of all lances being in use, which isn’t often the case. Therefore, by producing a system which varies the speed of the pumps to meet demand, we were saving the customer a lot of running costs.

The customer reported around a year later that had not had any issues or repairs to the system, plus it had saved them an estimated £11,000/year (at 10p/kW) on the system running cost.