Interfloor Flooring – Rossendale

Interfloor, part of the Victoria PLC group is the largest manufacturer of flooring underlay in Europe.  Since 2008 they have increased the proportion of recycled materials from 16% to 70% and reduced factory emissions by 90%. With environmental responsibilities clearly high on the agenda, they are always looking for solutions to reduce carbon emissions!

During a Power Factor Correction maintenance visit at their site in Rossendale, we identified one of their PFC units was underperforming, significantly.

With the unit working at full capacity it was improving the Power Factor from 0.46 (lag) to 0.65 (lag) and not only leading to increased kWh consumption and carbon emissions, but attracting significant financial penalties from their energy supplier.

Rather than completely replace the undersized PFC unit, we recommended the existing units’ capacity was expanded in the form of a ‘slave’ PFC unit.  Interfloor instructed us to proceed with our recommendations.

During our original PFC maintenance visit we had identified there was no suitably rated switch to facilitate the connection of the PFC slave unit to their existing switchgear, but offered a solution to this problem by including a suitably rated fused switch in the PFC unit specification.

By liaising closely with the client, the installation was completed across 2-days, with a short (1-hour) shutdown, outside their usual production hours to facilitate the connection of the PFC slave unit to their electrical switchgear.  The client was able to plan production around the 1-hour shutdown to remove any impact on their normal production schedule.

The installation of the PFC slave unit led directly to an improvement in Power Factor, from 0.65 (lag) to 0.99 (lag) and realised the environmental, system and financial savings detailed below.