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WESTON FOODS |
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George Weston Limited is a Canadian public company founded in 1882 and is one of North America’s largest food processing and distribution groups, which includes Loblaws Companies Limited and Weston Foods. Weston Foods focuses primarily on the baking and dairy industries within North America. In 2006, Weston Foods decided to undertake an energy audit of five of its Ontario bakeries located in Sudbury, Kingston, Kitchener, Mississauga and Toronto – each employing about 125 people – to identify energy consumption reduction and cost saving opportunities. Working with a professional energy auditor, Weston Foods developed a comprehensive energy management plan, which included the following measures: More efficient lighting: Each bakery could save about $100,000 in electricity costs annually by replacing the existing 400 watt high bay metal halide fixtures and bulbs, T12 fluorescent lights and metal halide175 watt fixtures with T8 fluorescent lights. Power factor correction: An analysis of the historical electricity bills and a demand profile of the bakeries revealed that they were paying a penalty because they had power factors of less than 90 per cent in most cases. It is anticipated that an investment of about $15,000 per plant in capacitors will result in a $20,000 payback within one year. Demand management: The demand profile also showed each plant had an infrequent peak demand of over 100 kW, which was occurring less than one per cent of the time over the course of the month. This peak demand sets the total distribution and transmission charges for the month. Identification of this peak allowed for procedural changes to manage peak power use. Requiring no investment in capital and only procedural administrative changes, over $10,000 per site can be saved in avoidable demand charges, as job tasks are managed to control the peak power load on the plant. Compressed air system controls: Compressed air is vital to the operations of a bakery. Audits found deficiencies in he system including inefficient control sequencing, inadequate storage, expensive uses of air such as panel cooling, vacuum generation and material moving, as well as inadequate maintenance leading to excessive system leaks. It is projected that improvements to the compressed air systems will result in approximately$100,000 annual savings for each bakery. Boiler optimization: A review of the bakeries’ boilers found that a savings of $50,000annually for each bakery could be achieved through insulation, addressing excess air balance, modulated air and gas mixing control, and full condensation recovery. The complete implementation of the energy management plan will require an investment of $350,000 - $450,000 per bakery, with an estimated cost recovery time of less than two years, followed by continued annual savings of $250,000for each bakery.“ A professional electricity audit can identify significant opportunities for savings, which sometimes require no cost to implement. At Weston we are anticipating $40,000 in savings as a result of shifting operations to different times of the day to lower our demand charges,” said Darren Borden, Energy Management Engineer, Weston Bakeries. So far, Weston has implemented the lighting and power factor correction recommendations in all four bakeries, and is beginning to make changes to its compressed air systems and boilers. |
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