Case Study - Cogeneration and solar optimisation

Şenpiliç is among the largest food producers in Europe with an annual energy consumption of over £20M across 4 large production facilities and 30 farms. The objective of this project was to help Şenpiliç reduce energy costs by optimising the on-site local energy generation assets (cogeneration (CHP) and solar) at 3 production facilities across Turkey.

The Challenge

xWatts were challenged to optimise the cogeneration assets with respect to dynamic energy demand, forecast solar generation, energy prices (electricity and natural gas), steam and hot water requirements.

The Solution

xWatts worked with Şenpiliç IT and Engineering teams to configure generator specifications (capacity, fuel consumption, amortisation costs etc.), solar specifications (capacity, azimuth, declination etc.) and to establish a secure robust connection to the xWatts platform to ingest real-time equipment data. The platform enabled the Şenpiliç team to forecast week-ahead power demand, predict day-ahead solar generation (accuracy of over 95%) and provided day-ahead optimisation scenarios (hour-by-hour recommendations) for optimal operation of the cogeneration engines. All optimisation scenarios were subject to the constraints inputted by the user (minimum/maximum utilization of each engine etc.)

Results

Over the course of 9 months, xWatts software demonstrated a >15% cost reduction equating to savings of over £300,000. The next steps for this project would be to provide optimisation of the primary energy consumption assets (HVAC, refrigeration) to further increase net annual savings.

>15% cost reduction equating to savings of over £300,000

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