The Centre, through its company Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), is planning to replicate its success in the LED space in the commercial sector by creating a market for low-cost, energy-efficient motors, a senior official said.
“A large chunk of energy consumption goes to industry,” S.P. Garnaik, national programme manager (CGM) at EESL told The Hindu. “About 30-34% of the total energy consumption goes to the industrial sector, which is a substantial amount. And out of that, about 70% is electrical energy consumption.” Most of this electricity consumption is due to the use of motor-driven systems, Mr. Garnaik added.
“Now, we can address the efficiency issues in the entire system or as at the sub-assembly level, which is at the motor level,” Addressing the entire system has larger opportunities but is more complex. You need so many technological interventions. So, initially, we decided to address it at a component level,” Mr. Garnaik said.
Using a combination of economies of scale and design efficiencies, Mr. Garnaik said EESL had so far been able to create motors in the capacity range of 1.1 KW to 22 KW that are 30% cheaper and result in an average of 15% lower electricity usage.
‘Other levers’
“Apart from the price benefit, one of the other levers to create demand is the fact that the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion has issued a quality assurance guidance that says that manufacturers will have to supply a minimum energy performance standard adhering to the ‘International Efficiency-2’ (IE-2) level,” Mr. Garnaik said.
The EESL motors are of the IE-3 level, which save between 7% to 23% of electricity compared with the current industry standard, depending on the application, Mr. Garnaik said.
“The present practice is of using non-IE motors,” he said. “About 99% of the motors being used are IE-1 or non-IE.” Phase 1 of the nation-wide programme, to be unveiled by Power Minister R.K. Singh, would seek to replace 1.2 lakh motors of the capacity of 1.1-22 KW, which would save 175 million units of electricity, he said.
In the second phase, , two lakh motors would be replaced, including those of a capacity higher than 22 KW. “There are in total about 11 million motors that can be replaced, which works out to about 15 billion units of electricity being saved,” Mr. Garnaik said. “This can lead to 6,000 MW of capacity reduction. But 11 million cannot be done overnight.”
