Quantum Controls helps wallpaper factory save £27,000 in energy costs

A saving of £27,000 a year in energy costs is being achieved by a manufacturer of high quality wall coverings, following the installation of ABB drives by Quantum Controls.

The customer is one of the largest manufacturers of wallpaper in the UK and produces products for a range of leading brands. Chief engineer and energy manager with the company, says: “I was keen to save energy and reduce our carbon footprint. There were several areas of concern I wanted to investigate.”

One of these areas was a large fan used to extract heat from one of the production processes. Run direct-on-line, it had no speed control and was extracting too much heat, resulting in both wasted electricity and a need to use more gas to compensate for the heat reduction.

Quantum Controls had been recommended to me, I heard they had blue chip clients such as BT, Sky and Tesco and this gave me confidence in the company and its abilities.”

Quantum Controls was asked to perform a site survey, which logged energy use data and identified several applications that could reduce their energy consumption. Four ABB variable speed drives were supplied on hire to prove the energy savings possible. “Quantum proposed a package of drives to me and showed the calculated savings and payback we could expect. Based on the carbon dioxide it would be saving, the Carbon Trust offered a loan of £120,000, even though the capital cost was nowhere near this figure.”

For the permanent installations, Quantum Controls installed nine ABB standard drives on six fan applications, saving over 9,000 kWhrs a week, giving an energy cost saving of just over £27,000 a year and a payback time of eight months.

“We are very happy with the savings made and we may have more applications that can benefit from drives. We would definitely like to work with Quantum Controls again.”