Energy efficiency, top priority in textiles!

Industrial sector consumes the highest power in India – about 49 percent of the total energy production in the country. Textile industry consumes the third highest energy in India. The industry is getting automated day by day and the consumption of energy is expected to increase. The need for efficient energy management lurk high in the Indian textile industry. That will also lead to reduced production costs.

As recent as June 2015, India faced a peak electricity shortage of 3.7 per cent, and around 30,000 MW is lying idle because of breakdowns and repair and maintenance work on power plants. India´s per capita power sector consumption, around 940 kilo watt-hour (kWh), is among the lowest in the world against China´s 4,000 kWh, and developed countries´ average 15,000 kWh. While India has installed power generation capacity of 2,49,488 MW, daily generation is only to the tune of 1,35,000 MW. India´s aggregate transmission and commercial (AT&C) losses are at 26 per cent of generation.

A saving grace for the crisis-ridden textile industry is Variable Frequency Drive (VFD), a type of motor controller that drives an electric motor by varying the frequency and voltage supplied to the electric motor. ¨An integrated drive with VFD can save crores of rupee and the payback is less than three years. The VFD also makes way for smooth start of the drive, better productivity and greater energy saving to the tune of about 42 per cent,¨ said a spokesman of Danfoss. ¨We have 29 million pumps in the industry and about 13 million running in households and country-side. If VFDs are used, there could be millions of rupees in saving,´ he added.

This necessity of energy efficiency has been the driving force behind innovations from Danfoss, which has been selling VFD-integrated drives to OEMs, system integrators and their partners.

Talking on energy efficiency, Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, said: ¨As income increased over the years, the air-conditioning also increased. In Delhi last August, the demand for power was 6,000 MW, which also may be same for Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. In October, in Delhi, the demand was 2,700 MW. The demand variation is mainly due to the greater need for air-conditioning during August. Therefore, the country has to build a huge capacity to meet this varying demands. So, the situation is that every new air-conditioner has to be more efficient than the previous one, and so BEE has been tightening the standards in air-conditioning.¨

Dr Mathur explained in detail why system efficiency is more important than component efficiency in reducing power consumption. ¨Here is where the PSR lab of Danfoss will help a lot for the manufacturers to understand the need for systems and application to reduce energy consumption. This will also pave way for developing certification systems. Energy efficiency should be at the core of any system for the future.¨

Replying to a question on BEE´s role for the textile industry, Dr Mathur categorically said that the Government has a two-pronged strategy to achieve sustainability in textile industry. One is the Technology Upgradation Fund (TUF) scheme; secondly, BEE is involved in measuring the energy involved in 1 tonne of fabrics and has been notifying this to the industry with a view to help the industry reduce energy consumption in the long run.