GKN shaves £20,000 off energy bill with ABB drives 15 September 2011

ABB low voltage ac drives are saving GKN AutoStructures in Telford £20,000 a year in energy costs on its Toyota components production line.

Ade Stone, energy champion at GKN ASL, explains that the production process, which makes chassis cross members for the Toyota Auris and Avensis vehicles, involves significant welding, so the line uses an extraction system to remove fumes.

So when ABB contacted GKN ASL with a proposal to investigate energy usage at the plant and determine if low voltage ac drives could make a difference on motor-driven applications, he pointed to the fume extraction system for trials.

Separate production sections work on the Auris and Avensis, each having an air intake and air extraction fan, driven by 55kW and 30kW motors respectively, and each oversized. For the trial, ABB installed two temporary drives and turned the motors' speeds down until they were extracting sufficient air volume – resulting in power saving of 55%, with one fan motor seeing a peak saving of 64%.

"Now that the full system is installed we are set to save around £20,000 on our energy costs, with a payback of between six to nine months," states Stone. "This is far better than our target figure for these types of projects, of 12 months."

ABB also provided training for GKN ASL maintenance staff so that they could keep the drives working at optimum performance. "We are now in the process of rolling out ABB low voltage ac drives to other areas of the plant," comments Stone. "We have recently installed five on the Land Rover Defender line and are looking to install another in our compressor house."

Brian Tinham

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