CASE STUDY
MAINTAINING THE BALANCE OF POWER
T
he way we use power is changing. From innovation like
solar farms and electric vehicle chargers, to the growing number
of devices we use daily in our personal and business lives, as
technology becomes more energy efficient, more compact and
offers greater control and flexibility, one of the shortcomings is the
impact on power quality.
NHP offers customers product flexibility through specialised and
tailored manufacturing solutions with designs and ideas brought to
life at the state-of-the-art National Manufacturing and Distribution
Centre in Laverton, Melbourne.
The 12,000 square metre facility develops world-class, customised
solutions through manufacturing, assembly, servicing, design,
engineering and the distribution of over 15,000 stocked lines.
Supported by extensive inventory-management technology and
coordinated warehousing, this facility is the beating heart of all
NHP’s distributed products, dispatching thousands of units each
day throughout Australia and New Zealand.
NHP’s National Manufacturing and Distribution Centre had a power
factor of approximately 0.8 lagging. Poor power quality influences
electrical installations in many ways, including driving up energy
costs, lowering overall energy efficiency, causing nuisance tripping
of circuit breakers, adding stress to infrastructure and damaging
equipment.
NHP’s facility required an innovative solution to correct the power
factor and improve the power utilisation onsite, while also greatly
reducing electricity bills.
As an industry leader in power factor correction upgrades, NHP’s
own products and services were selected to deliver the best result.
To pin point areas of decreased performance, NHP’s InfoSyte™ was
utilised to visualise both real-time and historical data. A powerful
cloud hosted energy management platform, the product integrates
with energy measuring devices along with other facility systems
to identify inefficiency, disjointed and complex systems, lost or
unknown data and value return.
“NHP’s InfoSyte™ gave us the flexibility to centralise not only all of the
site’s energy data, but also surrounding environmental data to form a
single point of information that allowed us a comprehensive overview
of the site’s operating status. Using this data, we could easily identify
areas where we needed to improve the operational efficiency,” said
NHP’s Product Marketing Manager – EMCS & Building Automation,
Justin Charlot.
With load requirements continuously changing, a solution was
needed that could respond dynamically to a wide range of power
factor issues.
8
The Static Var Generator (SVG) from Delta was selected for the
project, as the advanced performance of the unit offers complete
power factor correction by responding quickly and efficiently to
reactive power requirements.
The SVG also has minimal maintenance requirements and the
modular rack units made installation and retrofitting easy so the
capacity of the unit could be expanded in the future as necessary.
“We specified and installed this product as it has the capacity to
increase a lagging power factor to 0.99, and maintaining this under
any load condition. It also can correct leading power factor, as well as
balancing single phase loads,” said Mr Charlot.
Installed with the support of NHP’s experienced service team,
seamless integration was achieved with a customised solution that
was tailored to the specific site and the expert guidance given
during installation ensured a successful outcome for the project.
“NHP prides itself on supplying world-class product and systems, but
more importantly support these with an expert team that customers
can rely on,” said NHP’s Service Technician James Huf.
NHP is proud to continue to set the benchmark for delivering the
world’s best products and solutions to the local market by keeping
its National Manufacturing and Distribution Centre at the forefront
of efficient technology and operations.
The power factor upgrade at NHP’s Laverton facility delivered
immediate improvements in energy efficiency which leads to lower
power bills, improved energy utilisation and less impact on the
environment through a reduction in carbon emissions.