Success Story: Water

I. CUSTOMER ENVIRONMENT / PROJECT CONTEXT

Customer profile:

• Bacviz is the operation company in charge of providing drinking water to the town and region of Kecskemet. It represents a population of 120 000 inhabitants.

Customer objective and constraints:

• In Hungary the electrical utility providing electrical energy to the water operation company has a price policy based on a fixed subscription. When the water utility has peak demands over the subscription value some penalties are applied. The water utility wants to avoid this cost.
  
• More generally a clear understanding of the consumption of the different process steps is required to optimise the process. On average electricity bill accounts for up to 30% of operation cost for a water utility.

II. SOLUTION IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation methodology (main phases):

1. Meeting with operators to understand the key step of the process: deep underground pumping, sand filters, chlorination.
2. Instrumentation of the customer's electrical network with measurement devices connected to a web server.
3. Analysis of the data collected by the Schneider Electric services team.
4. Creation of an official report on a regular basis and presentation of the conclusions to the operation company staff.

Duration:

• 2 years: 2004 to 2006

Solution overview (services, products, systems, architectures...):

1. Revamping of Low Voltage switchgear 2. Compact NS Micrologic electronic trip units 3. Powerlogic meters and control 4. Modbus/Ethernet communication units 5. Ethernet server information collection 6. Information analysis

How did we estimate the energy savings (methodology, tools, ...)

• Energy savings were directly obtained by the reduction of the contract from a 600kW base to a 400kW base (winter subscription)

III. RESULTS / ACHIEVEMENT

Customer benefits:

• The customer has a lower contract with the water utility.
  
• He is able to manage the process to avoid peak demand : no filter backwashing during deep water pumping for instance.
  
• Balancing of the pumps to limit ageing.
  
• Pulsed air compressor optimisation.

Customer testimonies (Verbatim):

• Plant operation manager: "After 6 months of operation and the two first monitoring reports we have optimised the energy cost . We wish to extend the complete supervision of our electrical equipment on 2 pumping stations at Kecskemet."

Schneider Electric differentiating values VS competitors:

• Local service team collaboration with a local panel builder.
  
• Full solution proposed by the same team including electrical equipment revamping, Ethernet TCP/IP transmission of data via a safe router, interpretation of data by experts, quarterly reports for recommendations.