Founded in the 1990s, the production line, machinery and auxiliary equipments at Thang Long Plastic Joint Stock Company are not compatible, leading to inefficient energy consumption. In order to find solutions to the problem, Thang Long Plastic Joint Stock Company has conducted energy audit and applied various measures to reduce electricity costs as well as to improve power efficiency.

An enterprise with high level of energy consumption, in 2009 Thang Long Plastic JSC chose to conduct energy audit, an activity under the National Target Program on energy efficiency and conservation. With supports from the energy audit group – Center for Electricity experiment – Electricity I Company, Thang Long Plastic has found out 6 approaches to energy efficiency with possibility to cut expenses down by billions per year.

“So far, the company has conducted many managerial measures on managing the level of energy consumption, especially with electricity use. The company’s Board of Directors always regards the issue of reducing fuel waste, saving power and water is the vital element, which does not only bring about economical benefits but also save the environment. This issue should receive even more attention in the future,” said Mr. Le Hoang, Director of the company.

A common method used by many businesses is to improve the lighting system. This is a simple and inexpensive but highly effective method. Factories of Thang Long Plastic all use 200W light bulbs with very low efficiency. Simply by replacing the entire system with 80W power-saving bulbs, the company can save 128 thousand kWh per year, equivalent to a reduction of VND124 million in expenditure.

For the industrial water pumping area, energy auditors suggest installing an additional shared pipe to help push the pump heads, making it easier for the pumps to identify the status of pumping load. Accordingly, during operation, it is only necessary to monitor the pressure at the pumping end and sucking end. If the pressure at pumping end increases,, that means consumers are using less water, then the pumps need to reduce the capacity or shut down some additional paths to reduce power load. This solution requires an investment of VND24 million and will help the company save over VND12 million each year.

Effective energy management is another proposal that concerns the energy auditors. According to Mr. Hoang Van Phi, head of the auditors’ group, the installation of electricity gauges at the points of energy consumption is of great importance. This is the first step that the manager should take in practicing energy monitoring and calculating monthly energy consumption of each product, from which one can choose the lowest level of energy consumption to be the target for operating activities of the company.

At the Thang Long Plastic JSC, after careful calculation and creating targets for energy efficiency, it is estimated that the company is able to save from 2% to 10% of energy consumption, provided good management practice. In addition, installation of power load gauges could save about 2% of energy consumption.

The company has 15 injection molding machines in operation, but only six active air conditioners for cooling the mold. The remaining molding machines have to use water for cooling molds, so that cooling time should be long, consequently extends the production time of a unit, leading to power waste. The plan to add six more air conditioners for the remaining injection molding machines is considered an effective solution to help reduce costs and production time. It is known that this solution requires a relatively large investment of VND500 million, but then it could save over 76 million per year. This is a long term investment plan which is being evaluated by the company’s Board of directors. 

Specifically, the survey found that the potential of saving energy when mounting inverters for injection molding machines, extruders and blow air compressors is much greater. With average electricity price of 968 dong per kWh, each year the company can save about 739 trillion kilowatt hours, equal to a saving of over VND716 million.

In addition to focusing on energy savings, the company also pays attention to efficient use of water. Each year water expense hear amounts to about VND230 million. Short term measures like cleaning water tanks and arranging to spray the tanks of air conditioners, can save about 77 thousand cubic meters per year while reducing electricity cost used for running the pumps by about 10 million kWh.

By Nguyen An