Case 5: a "holistic" view
A multinational American auto parts manufacturer with several industrial units spread across the country (Brazil) hired me to identify opportunities for cost reduction in the energy sector.
Two very "outside the box" opportunities emerged!Â
The first had to do with heat treatment. In one of the units, I noticed that they were using a gas furnace which had been chosen (years earlier) to replace the electric one previously used. However, I noticed that the plants were receiving energy via the free market BUT since production activity was below the "nominal" business plan, power consumption was far below the contracted volume and, to make matters worse, the "spot" price was low, causing considerable losses (selling excess not consumed energy at the power clearinghouse).
I suggested something very simple, shocking even! Activate the electric furnace instead of the gas one. The calculations showed that the total cost with this suggestion would be much lower than the current situation -using gas. This because there would no contractual excess power to be sold (cheaply) at the spot.
The second, also unbelievable, was in relation to one of the plants, which, unlike the others in the group, needed to expand to serve an automaker. However, to do so, it would need to migrate to class A2 (138 kV) since the current demand (associated with a voltage of 13 kV - A4) was at 5 MW and there would be an increase of 2 MW.
The challenge was that this automaker was suffering from the low market activity and would not receive authorization from headquarters y to make all the necessary investments in a substation and connection line with the concessionaire. What I suggested to the VP was something extraordinarily simple! I discovered that in one of the plants, served in A2, there was a 10 MVA reserve transformer that was not being used.
The idea was: to make the substation for this expanding unit viable using this existing transformer. This way, the investment in the solution would be greatly reduced, since the 138 kV/13 kV transformer is the most expensive item in the "package".