Living in tough economical times such as those that we are currently experiencing, the need to be able to make savings where possible is paramount in keeping many businesses viable.

When you are, however, a business the size of Silver Fern Farms, New Zealand’s foremost meat marketer, exporter and processor of meat products, a group that posted revenues of NZ$1.8 billion through sales of more than a third of the New Zealand sheep meat and beef, then implementing money saving ideas and equipment can mean considerable savings for the company.

Being a large industrial company, the electricity usage by Silver Fern Farms would already be quite substantial. So when the New Zealand Electricity companies slapped a $7 kVAr penalty on businesses that went over their electricity quota, then something had to be done… enter NHP and EMF.

NHP, working in conjunction with EMF Electrical, recently installed three Power Factor Correction units in two of Silver Fern Farms engine rooms at their Pacific Plant in Whakatu.

The Power Factor Correction units that were installed were custom made at our premier Laverton facility in Melbourne, with each unit individually tailored for the job with turn-key notifications.

“Since April 2008, New Zealand’s energy companies have placed a penalty on Power Factor Correction, meaning if you are not up to 0.96 Power Factor you pay a $7 kVAr penalty. For large companies like Silver Fern Farms, penalties can run into the thousands of dollars, so it is in their best interests to improve their Power Factor,” says Darron Matthews, EMF Electrical’s Managing Director.

In short, Power Factor is a measure of active power use to apparent power use, numerically measured from 0 to 1. Hypothetically, if a facility has a power factor of 0.7 active power would constitute 70 % of the apparent power draw. The remaining 30% of apparent power is used to maintain magnetic fields of the load and losses in transmission equipment. It is possible to reduce this 30% component of the apparent power draw through the use of PFC equipment, thus reducing total power draw into site and minimising any relevant tariff charges.

NHP aims for 0.98 Power Factor, well above the penalty imposing 0.96 cut-off mark. An estimate of Silver Fern Farms energy use would be in excess of half a million dollars worth of power per month and with NHP’s Power Factor Correction units being able to save up to 10 % of that figure each month, as one can see, the unit pays for itself very quickly.

“For this particular project, mainly because Silver Fern Farms Pacific Plant already had some existing Power Factor Correction, we were dealing with loads that we weren’t sure of as well as loads that were increasing all the time as more machinery was added to the plant. The issues were ascertaining how much extra we needed to put in and interfacing new power factor with old power factor. It has been quite a complex task to get to where we are today,” said Darron Matthews.

“There are always teething problems when you do something new and we have had good co-operation from NHP’s technicians. NHP and EMF have worked together to find the best solution for the customer. The main issue we had to deal with was the environment we encountered up in the roof of the beef house where temperatures regularly reach 40°C, so we had to put in additional cooling and we installed a larger fan in the power factor unit as well, so there have been a lot of little things we have had to overcome to ensure that we got it right.”