Leading waste processor uses energy management to achieve green goals
Waste processing company Omrin from the Netherlands collects waste for more than 175,000 households and more than 8,500 companies and institutions. The household waste of nearly 800,000 households and a large number of companies is processed by the Frisian company. Omrin - which is Frisian for the word 'Recycling' - aims to recover as many raw materials as possible from waste and to produce sustainable energy from it.
100% of the refuse trucks run on self-produced green gas
For example, Omrin uses the biogas they produce to make at least 1 million cubic meters of green gas annually, so that the vehicle fleet can run 100% on the waste they collect. In this way they try to close more and more cycles. Thanks to this approach, they are able to make 71 percent of the waste they collect suitable for reuse. This makes Omrin a leader in the Netherlands, because nationally it is approximately 50 percent.
Insight into energy consumption per factory
As a company with great ambitions, the number of Omrin factories grew. This created the need to have insight into the energy consumption per factory. "We rent a business premises to the NTCP (National Test Center for Circular Plastics). We calculate their energy consumption. Then we need to know what this consumption is. The power analyzers from Janitza help us with data," explains installation manager Tom de Vries. At the end of the month, he easily produces an overview for the financial administration. At the same time, they need more energy than is currently supplied by the supplier. One solution for this is green gas for their fleet, but that is not sufficient for the entire energy demand.
About fifty energy meters provide continuous information
Omrin uses now about fifty Janitza meters in various distributors. These meters are all linked to the Ultimate version of the GridVis® software and provide continuous information to the people responsible for the installation. Energy coordinator Estelle Arnaud thus has access from her computer to all the meters installed on the extensive Omrin site.
Estelle explains that a major advantage of the meters is that they can also view the historical values: "We have been using these energy meters for over a year now. In this way, we can compare the current consumption with the consumption of, for example, a year ago."
Use available energy as efficiently as possible
Omrin not only engaged fortop for Janitza's energy meters but also had a power quality measurement carried out. This showed that there was too much reactive power in the installation of the compressors, causing controllers to break down. Fortop recommended a permanent measurement in all distributors.
"Compressed air is expensive, so it is important for us to understand the compressors. With the data from the energy meters, we can make adjustments if necessary." Estelle continues: "Our green ambitions ensure that we use the available energy as efficiently as possible. If we eliminate reactive power, we make better use of the capacity of our installations. Another additional advantage is that we have cleaner and therefore better electricity in our installation. This greatly reduces the risk of broken equipment. The reactive current compensation is a subject that we want to involve fortop in."
