Celebrating 25 years of energy saving
Halcyon Drives Limited celebrated its 25th anniversary in style by showing Tata Steel in Rotherham, savings of £68,000 following the installation of five ABB ACS800 industrial drives. Return on the investment, after taking all costs into account is expected to be just 13 months.
Halcyon currently employs 35 people including a team of six specialist service engineers who design, build and commission control panel systems, can undertake energy audits and are available 24 hours per day to carry out repairs. If a repair can’t be achieved straight away, the company has replacement drives available whilst the customer’s one is taken off site for repair.
Halcyon Drives has four main areas of operation; the design building and commission of control panel systems, specialist distribution, ABB variable speed service and an in-house training and seminar programme.
Director, Gary Thorpe explained, “We only deal with one specialist manufacturer in each specific area. This allows us to become experts in each quality product. We aren’t the cheapest, we focus on a quality product, quality service and we carry a large level of stock, so that we can supply our customers’ needs – even something a large as a 400KW drive. Rather than expecting a customer to believe the energy savings we quote them, they can hire a drive to prove the cost savings for themselves before purchase.”
Besides designing and building its own control panels on site, Halcyon Drives is also an authorised distributor of ABB variable speed drives, Induction motors and Softstarters, Rockwell Automation Guardmaster, Riello Uninterrupted Power Supplies and PULS Din Railed Power Supplies.
Laura Coxon, (sales and marketing), said “the ABB variable speed drives are amazing, by reducing the power input by 20%, energy savings of around 50% can be made. We believe many companies in Yorkshire and beyond can achieve these energy savings and so we are running an in-house energy saving seminar on September 23rd. with a guest speaker from ABB to tell companies all about the products”
The last word goes to Ben Holroyde, Tata’s Project Planning Engineer – “We choose energy saving projects based not only on the actual energy and money saved but also on their commercial viability. We look for schemes that will pay back within two years so for a project to pay back in such a short time was phenomenal. We have a good working relationship with Halcyon and we were very pleased with the project, with the permanent drive installation fitted in six weeks. As well as the energy savings we will make, noise has also been reduced in the area, giving better working conditions for maintenance staff”
