Despite all of the Government's best efforts to encourage energy savings,
both through the stick of the CCL and the carrot of ECAs, the take-up of
drives for energy savings applications is far below expectations. Malcolm
Staff believes the life cost benefits of such equipment are being ignored
against the initial first cost investment, despite the proven benefits
The contribution that variable speed drives can make to energy savings
and reduced carbon emissions is well established and today largely
undisputed. It has been claimed, not unreasonably, that if VSDs were
applied on all applicable fans and pumps across industry and commerce,
the savings would themselves more that meet our government's Kyoto
commitments.
So why has British industry been so slow on the uptake? Notwithstanding
the additional burden imposed by the CCL to focus attention on the need
to reduce energy consumption, one might have thought that an opportunity
to save on the energy utilised in production would have been welcomed. At
a time when increased sales are hard to come by, every pound saved in
energy costs represents a pound increase on the bottom line without the
need to sell a single unit more of production, but industry seems to be
ignoring the possibilities.
There is nothing new in the concept of applying ac variable speed drives
for energy saving purposes. In the mid 1970s, energy savings rapidly
became an area of focus for sales of ac drives, particularly for larger
fan and pump installations over 100kW, and at that time frequently a
three-year cost-justification period was considered. Today the cost per
kW of ac drives has reduced to levels undreamed off in the '70s, enabling
applications as small as 4kW to be retrofitted to great benefit. Despite
this, industry has during the same period reduced its expectation of cost
justification to two years at best and less in some cases. Even where a
well researched case has been made, budgets have not been allocated for
the work. It would appear that British industry cannot afford to spend
money to save money!
Part of the reason for the slow uptake is the failure of engineering
staff to put energy savings schemes forward to management for
consideration and budgetary approval. This is the 'if it ain't broke -
don't fix it' syndrome. In many instances energy saving considerations
are low on the agenda of the busy plant engineer and keeping production
running and securing budgets for plant upgrades takes first priority.
Financial management may frequently be unaware of just how much money
could be saved and don't themselves initiate an energy savings programme
and bring energy efficiency to the top of the agenda. It is even possible
that claims for the potential energy savings are so substantial that they
seem to fall within the 'too good to be true' category, despite
well-proven case studies, many independently compiled by ETSU, or FES, as
it is now.
Every capital equipment salesman can expound at length about the
short-termism which afflicts British Industry. In the great majority of
cases, first-cost completely overrules any consideration of the life cost
benefits of the equipment, sometimes to the detriment of the buyer. More
frequently, the life cost of a piece of equipment is completely ignored
in favour of making a minor saving in the initial purchase price. Where
energy efficiency is concerned, this short term approach leads to
significant energy wastage to the detriment of the environment and to
substantial financial loss to the detriment of the profits of the
business. Indeed, first cost is frequently only the very tip of a large
costly iceberg. Recent government sponsored research reveals that the
initial purchase price of a fan installation may account for a mere 2.5%
of the life cost of the equipment, maintenance another 2.5%, the
remaining 95% being accounted for by running