Finding Energy Savings in the Air

9 January 2014

75.5 GWh - equivalent to the annual consumption of 22,000 households. That is how much DONG Energy needs to save on energy consumption at Danish power stations before 2020.

"The purpose of the project is energy efficiency at DONG Energy's power stations through specific projects and an increased awareness of energy efficiency," said Edvald Eyjolfsson, Engineer in DONG Energy.

And the specific projects are tangible. At the Avedøre Power Station they have discovered millions in savings - in the air.

Technical and tangible savings

Frequency converter, outgoing air compressor, ventilation system, air pressure leak, absorber pumps. It may sound like a technical dictionary, but actually it is only a fraction of topics discussed at the Avedøre Power Station when they needed to find areas where they could save money.

"We have large-scale and small-scale projects all contributing to us achieving the target of cost savings on our own energy consumption. One of the large-scale and exciting project is that we save money on air," said Jens Lebech Kaagaard, Maintenance Manager at the Avedøre Power Station and project manager on the energy savings project at the power station.

"It's a bit technical, but we can save a lot of air by replacing the old positioners. A positioner regulates the control airflow into the valve. The new model uses 90% less air than the ones installed today. This will result in annual cost savings of 3.45GWh - corresponding to the annual consumption of 1,000 Danish households.

Investment pay-back in 1 year and 3 months

At the Avedøre Power Station, DONG Energy will replace 106 positioners at a cost of slightly more than EUR 200,000. The investment is expected to be recovered in one year and three months.

"Considering that these positioners will potentially last for ten years, we're talking about significant savings, hundreds of thousands EUR. And this is only at the Avedøre Power Station. We will now begin calculating how much we can save if the other power stations are able to make the same investment," said Jens Lebech Kaagaard.

"Furthermore, we've installed air meters to verify that we actually achieve the savings we hope to achieve. The above estimated savings are based on the calculations of the supplier, and we want to check that these are accurate before we continue investing in additional replacements," he said.

Energy advisers from DONG Energy as well as external consultants have helped the power stations find and analyse the energy-saving initiatives. After completing the analyses, the power stations will be responsible for implementing the projects which make sense.

Source: DONG Energy

For more news, visit our Newsroom