Centre targets industry to save power

Centre targets industry to save power

Context:

• The Centre, through its company Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), is planning to replicate its success in the LED space in the commercial sector by creating a market for low-cost, energy-efficient motors.

Rationale behind this decision:

• A large chunk of energy consumption goes to industry.
• About 30-34% of the total energy consumption goes to the industrial sector, which is a substantial amount. And out of that, about 70% is electrical energy consumption.
• Most of this electricity consumption is due to the use of motor-driven systems.
• To address the efficiency issues in the entire system.
• EESL had so far been able to create motors in the capacity range of  1.1 KW to 22KW that are 30% cheaper and result in an average of 15% lower electricity usage.

EESL motors:

• The EESL motors are of the IE-3 level, which save between 7% to 23% of electricity compared with the current industry standard, depending on the application

Present practice:

• The present practice is based on using non-IE motors
• About 99% of the motors being used are IE-1 or non-IE.

Phase wise plans:

First phase:

•   Phase 1 of the nation-wide programme, would seek to replace 1.2 lakh motors of the capacity of 1.1-22 KW, which would save 175 million units of electricity.

Second phase:

• In the second phase, , two lakh motors would be replaced, including those of a capacity higher than 22 KW.
• There are in total about 11 million motors that can be replaced, which works out to about 15 billion units of electricity being saved.
• This can lead to 6,000 MW of capacity reduction. But 11 million cannot be done overnight.