by Wayne R. Viehweg, Electripure
“We live and die on the last 10 percent. Sometimes we do very well, other times we struggle. So anything that helps increase the odds that we’ll hit that 10 percent, I’m all ears.” —Taylor Dean, Structural Steel & Plate Fabrication Co., North Salt Lake, Utah
I first heard of Structural Steel’s problem back in 2011. Taylor Dean, a principal of the company, told me that it began with their computers and printers. They were burning up or shutting down, and they had no idea why.
They did know that the building housing their plant was old, including the electrical system. The only time they’d upgraded the system was during expansions when they had to bring in new power. So they started doing quick fixes. They bought back-up batteries for each computer and back-up power for the server—to no avail.
Then the problem got worse. Like a virus, it started to infect their heavy equipment. Motherboards on machines started crashing and burning out. As a result, they were losing as much as a week of productivity every quarter.
They contacted the manufacturers of the machines to see if they could give any insights. One manufacturer stated that Structural Steel’s welder was too close to the machine, creating electromagnetic waves that could be interfering with the machine’s electrical system. Taylor thought that that was kind of strange—but he was willing to give it a shot. They followed the advice and undertook the major task of increasing the distance between equipment. Unfortunately, it still didn’t help.
It was then they started doing research. Taylor noticed that it was only on certain days that specific pieces of equipment were going down. So Taylor asked his electrician to test the power. The electrician detected variations in power usage, with some machines not getting the power they needed to run efficiently. They wondered: could that be the reason the motherboards were burning out? But what to do?
One day Taylor was talking to a project manager at GE Energy, one of Structural Steel’s customers.
Taylor explained to him the problems they were having. The GE manager then told Taylor about my company, Electripure. It just so happened that GE had brought Electripure in to tackle the same problems Structural Steel was having.
However, the project manager explained Electripure’s work only in terms of energy savings—not as a way to solve power problems. That didn’t exactly impress Taylor: “Energy savings? Hey, I have more pressing issues!” But the GE manager referred Taylor to me, and we were able to chat.
I assured Taylor that the Electripure system does much more than merely save energy. I explained that our system actually cleans up the power, allowing his plant and machines to run much more efficiently. And, just as critical, to put a damper on unplanned downtime.
With those promises—along with GE’s endorsement!—Taylor gave me permission to analyze his company’s power bills, as well as meter the plant and its use of power.
What those two exercises uncovered were various power glitches:
Taylor quickly grasped the impact those glitches would be having on his bottom line. He was faced with a political reality: he had to convince the company’s executive committee with a quantifiable ROI. In his mind, the only quantifiable data was Electripure's promise of reducing power costs. Everything else had to be left on the table, including lost production, repairs and replacement of parts, reloading the machines with software and job specs, employee downtime, general and administrative overhead, and (dread the thought) delivery delays.
Still, even with a longer ROI, the promise of reduced power costs was enough to convince everyone that installing the Electripure system was worth the bet.
So given the promise of power savings, what, in fact, did Structural Steel gain? Before the installation of Electripure's CleanPQ™ system, the company was consuming power at around $18,300 a month. After the first month, it dropped to $16,300, a savings of 11 percent—or a total of $24,000 during the first year.
Given the size of the plant, the CleanPQ™ system cost Structural Steel $21,000 for hardware and installation. That meant their ROI on just the energy savings alone came in at 10.5 months.
But what about all the other benefits?
For starters, they haven’t had one piece of equipment go out from electrical failure. No more waiting for new parts to arrive. No more having to reload the application software. No more re-inputting job data. So right there—according to Taylor—the company’s avoiding about $30,000 a year in repairs.
So with these additional savings, Structural Steel got an ROI in just under 4.7 months.
And it could easily be even shorter.
Just consider the pain of having to tell a customer that their job will be delayed due to a machine going down. Taylor prides his company on customer service, so every time he has to report a delay, that can only increase the risk of losing the next job—or worse, losing the customer altogether.
Add to that the fact that many of Structural Steel’s customers are in the Fortune 500 club. Lose even just one of those customers, and imagine what that would do to Structural Steel’s bottom line.
But there’s more to the story. Every plant manager should know that when you lose a machine for a week, you have a “throughput problem”; everything gets backed up waiting for the machine to be repaired. You have to move things around and reschedule, you have employees either waiting around or diverted to less productive tasks, and you have top management getting sucked into crisis management, rather than spending their time actually managing the company.
To top it off, when all of this happens in a plant running three shifts, 24/7, there’s no time on the calendar where you can actually recover that lost production.
So what would be Structural Steel’s ultimate savings after installing the Electripure system? Without disclosing Structural Steel’s proprietary figures, here’s what they’re ultimately saving, based on industry norms:
So ask yourself if your plant has experienced any of the following power-quality hiccups during the past 24 months:
If so, your plant may be suffering from power-quality issues. And even if your hiccups stem from other factors, power quality should be the first line of attack, not the last—as you may have already figured out from Structural Steel’s experience.
To make it very easy to check on your power quality, let me offer you a free initial analysis (at no obligation) of your plant’s consumption of power. All I need is a copy of your last 12 months of bills. To send your bill along, email me at wviehweg@electripure.com.
Yours truly,
Wayne R. Viehweg
President/CEO
Electripure, LLC
“Right now we have 80 employees. We’ve enjoyed steady growth since we started in the ’70s. For our growth to continue and still have reliable power quality, we would be nuts not to use Simplure from here on out.” —Taylor Dean, Structural Steel