Tata Steel saves 7,400 MWh with ABB DriveSave scheme 21 May 2014

Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks is reporting energy savings of more than 7,400 MWh a year, following installation of 62 ABB VSDs (variable speed drives).

Drives range from 15kW to 200kW and all were installed under ABB's DriveSave scheme, which guarantees large sites agreed energy savings with ROI in less than three years, if they are willing to make significant investment across many applications.

DriveSave also includes a five year warranty for all installed drives, together with a five year preventive maintenance programme.

"We have used large drives in the past and wanted to use drives on smaller applications," explains James Davies, senior electrical engineer at Tata Steel.

"However, our site engineers did not have the time to assess these applications and fit the appropriate drives to suit them," he continues.

"This is where the DriveSave project proposed by ABB was attractive: ABB would manage all these smaller projects for a total money value, rather than doing them piecemeal."

Making that work involved two Tata Steel central engineers to assess which applications would benefit. These engineers worked with ABB to choose the final list of applications.

"The main driver for Tata Steel was that this was one project, meaning a single purchase order," states ABB's John Guthrie.

"The local areas of the plant do not have their own capital expenditure budget for this amount of work, so this represented an easier solution for them."

And he adds: "What makes DriveSave special is the performance guarantee; -- so the customer can look at this as purchasing energy saving. It is also attractive to Tata Steel because the savings guarantee means ABB shares the project risk and allows them to penalise ABB for under achievement and reward a bonus for over achievement."

Guthrie explains that a wide range of applications were chosen for the overall project, although mostly pump and fan improvements, chosen for criteria such as ease of accessibility and being part of a duty/ standby arrangement, rather than in constant use.

On one particular application – gas recirculation fans used in the site's power plant – Tata Steel has already achieved 60% energy savings. Replacing the original hydraulic fluid coupling control with VSDs also reduced the maintenance requirements of the fluid coupling.

Another significantly improved application was across the multi-pump systems used to move effluent from processes and drainage throughout the site. Existing systems were controlled in an on-off regime, using float switches to handle liquid levels in reservoir tanks, controlling the pumps in each tank in a batch process.

VSDs, working with ultrasonic level control sensors that communicate via the plant's existing PLCs now instigate continuous level control on the tanks. And it's a similar story with the cooling fan systems in the hot strip mill and strip drying fans in the cold rolling mill, which benefitted by linking fan demand to process line speed while also reducing over-sizing problems.

"We had regular meetings with ABB, who were very flexible about how they managed the various projects to avoid disruption," comments Davies.

"We have also reduced our maintenance effort, due to the replacement of some obsolete motors and starters."

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
ABB Ltd
Tata Steel

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