“The results are really quite amazing, compared to what our Electricity demand used to be.” ~ Jenny Jones, Australian Growing Solutions.

Australian Growing Solutions is an Australian owned market leader in the supply and development of premium grade growing media, nutrition and water management products to the horticultural industry.

Located in Tyabb, Victoria with world class operations utilising the best in manufacturing technology, AGS Commercial products are now exported to a number of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan.

Project scope

With increasing power bills, AGS sought the help of Control Logic. With a low power factor confirmed, AGS needed to subsequently improve their power factor to reduce demand charges from their electricity supplier.

The goal for AGS was to improve their power factor to as close as possible to unity, thereby reducing their KVA demand charges.

Solution

Accessing Australian Growing Solutions’ current power bill and NMI meter data through Control Logic’s free Power Audit service, it was determined the best solution was to install an ABB power factor correction unit.

As part of the process, the size of the unit was selected to provide AGS with the best efficiency. The unit was installed, fitted and commissioned by Control Logic.

Image above: ABB Power Factor Correction Unit

Benefits

Once the power factor correction unit was installed, AGS’s power factor had improved from 0.64 to 0.99, greatly reducing the amount of reactive power needed to import from the supply authority network which in turn reduced their KVA demand.

Taking the month of April as an example their KVA demand was reduced from 362 to 234, a reduction of 128 KVA. Based on today’s charges, this was a saving of $672.00 for the month of April alone. This ultimately makes their payback period less than 12 months for the unit (excluding installation costs), enabling the company to save well into the future.

The benefits of an improved power factor means that equipment will run longer, more efficiently, with less maintenance costs and greater productivity on a day-to-day basis.

Image above: Schematic overview of PFC unit connections 

Contact

For more information on ABB Power Factor Correction, what to expect at your initial consultation or this case-study please contact Control Logic which is now an IPD business, by clicking here.