Last month thanks to HISPATEC and PROYECTA INGENIO, TESLA Project visited three fruit and vegetables processing plants in Almería: Vegacañada S.A., VICASOL I y II S.C.A. and S.A.T. LAS HORTICHUELAS.

The main purpose of this visit was to identify the measures applied by this companies to improve the energy efficiency in their processes. Cooling and cold storage represent a high percentage of the energy consumption (around 50%) therefore important energy efficiency measures are being carried out by these companies.

ABB, SIEMENS, OMRON, PHILIPS, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC, CIRCUTOR, GEA WESTFALIA, PIERALISI, LASIAN, YGNIS, COGEBIO, COPELAND (EMERSON GROUP), FRANCESCA PUMP Enologiche GROUP CIAT, CPC SOLAR, APIPNA and WEG.

For the development of the European project TESLA, is being very useful to have information about technologies related to optimizing and energy consumption savings in the food industry, particularly for the 4 sectors under the project: olive oil mills, animal feed factories, wineries and fruit and vegetables proccesing plants.

Since last September we start to gather a collection of best practices in relation to equipment and technology on energy efficiency, which will be made available to the 110 companies that are being audited in the 4 countries where TESLA is being carried out (Spain, France, Italy and Portugal).

For the European character of the project, we have considered to get in contact with companies interested in the food industry and in energy efficiency, whose technology is extended to a broader level. To date they have collaborated the following: ABB, SIEMENS, OMRON, PHILIPS, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC, CIRCUTOR, GEA WESTFALIA, PIERALISI, LASIAN, YGNIS, COGEBIO, COPELAND (EMERSON GROUP), FRANCESCA PUMP Enologiche GROUP CIAT, CPC SOLAR, APIPNA and WEG.

We acknowledge their invaluable help, we want to express thank for it and encourage other companies to work with the TESLA project.

Asean Brown and Bovery (ABB) has shown its engagement to TESLA Project in several ways, the least one trough their participation in Best Practices Collection.

The last friday 29th of November were held by ABB in Madrid one interesting meeting about energy efficiency in industry.. ABB employs an staff of 145.000 people worldwide with a global turnover of 39.800 M€

In this event the main solutions for energy efficiency on industry was presented, the most relevant for TESLA purposes is above highlighted:

1)Cast Coil Dry Type transformers: They largely decrease the Load losses and No-Load Losses. The 5% of the total losses of energy in industry is currently due to transformers

2)Quality of internal distribution of energy. Filter of harmonics and capacitor bank to compensate reactive energy and harmonic deviations.

3)Drives and high efficient engines. ABB estimates around a 30% of potential savings of energy used in engines in industry if drivers will be largely implanted. The 60% of the total industry consumption is from the engine utilization. Moreover ABB has put in the market of the low voltage segment, the new IE4 synchronous reluctance motor. Those could be widely implemented in pumps and fans, enhancing the rate of efficiency up to 6 points up.

4)The utilization of KNX based devices for improve of energy management in offices and buildings and their EMS developments such as ABB Energy Manager.

, for instance the public release of  key technical deliverables, the celebration of important meetings for the project, the state of audit work, the workshops that will be held  in several European regions, and so on. 

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37 technicians from the four cooperatives organizations working under TESLA project have positively evaluated the training courses about energy audits. The training sessions have been made up of three theory classes that have taken place in Lisbon, Madrid, Florence and Paris. After this, they have had the opportunity of practicing the acquired knowledge by the developing of an energy audit in a cooperative per country. So, three wineries in Portugal, Spain and Italy respectively, and a fruit and vegetables processing plant in France opened their doors to us to be audited as a pilot.

After its development, as shown in the graph, it is notable that around 70% (67.65%) of participants have overall rated the training as "very good". And in particular, have also qualified, with the same gradation and around 50% of the participants, the method (41%), content (50%) and the materials used for the courses (44%). Regarding the trainer contribution to the lessons, a higher appreciation is highlighted, placing it among "very good" (44%) and "excellent" (38%).