The programme, which has been in place for more than three years, has been made public because of the urgent power crisis in South Africa, but was initially begun for environmental reasons.
“We have been putting systems in place to reduce power usage for some time because of environmental concerns and for better cost efficiency. The fact that there is now a national power crisis has brought these issues to the public forum, which is a good thing, as it allows industry to share power-sharing ideas,” says Andrew Singer, plant engineering manager at Continental Tyre.
“Although the power crisis has not affected us in a production capacity in the same manner as other centres such as Gauteng and Mpumalanga as yet, we are committed to reducing our power load,” he says.
“The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality (NMMM) has a strategy to first target residential and then commercial power usage and so as part of industry, we have not yet been affected as badly. When there is high electrical usage in the Bay and NMMM are told by Eskom to shed load, they send us an urgent communication asking us to shed non-essential load immediately. Non-essential load includes certain lighting and air conditioning in the offices, and this gets shut down as soon as possible.
“If we had to undergo a full electrical blackout, the entire plant would have to shut down and the possibility would be strong that certain products in production would have to be scrapped. The losses in big industrial plants such as ours would be high.
“In order to save electricity, we have a production monitoring system in place in the plant which monitors the energy systems and electrical usage so that we can see peak demand, steam consumption and air pressures in the plant and so on.
We find that electrical usage peaks throughout the day and lowers slightly during tea breaks, lunches and shift changes. We also have a project running to improve the monitoring of incoming voltage, frequency and power usage so that we remain constantly aware of the quantity and quality of power we are using.”
In addition, Continental’s ‘Lighting Efficiency Project’ involves the replacement of all various types of light fittings within the plant with high-efficiency industrial fluorescent tubes with electronic ballasts.
“We are working with Eskom on this project and have calculated that just by changing to these more efficient fluorescent light fittings, we will reduce our power usage by 4%-5%. Lighting alone takes up 10% of our electrical bill. Eskom will subsidise this project which we hope to complete by October,” Singer says. He explains that the tyre plant’s Ripple Relay Project was initiated after Eskom approached the tyre firm to be a pilot on the project.
Continental is also looking at occupancy sensors in conjunction with timers in offices so that when the sensors detect no human activity in the office, the lights and air conditioners will automatically switch off. This will also help in cases when employees forget to switch the lights and air-conditioners off when they leave.
And in order to communicate the importance of energy saving to its employees, Continental will launch an internal energy saving competition amongst all employees, which will reward good energy saving ideas and actions with attractive prizes.
Managing Director Claudio Boezio adds: “We all have a role to play in reducing the impact, in the short term, of the current electricity crisis, but ultimately to positively impact our planet by reducing our carbon footprint.” (SA Treads/Douglasdale, South Africa)
