The Vaccines and Biologicals Company No. 1 (Hoan Kiem, Hanoi) specializes in manufacturing and trading vaccines and other biological products with an amount of 9 million doses per year. Realizing its energy consumption was rather high and wanting to raise the efficiency of energy use, the Company has implemented the energy audit to find out solutions to reduce production costs.

The energy auditors from the Hanoi Center for Energy Efficiency realize that the energy saving potential in the Company is great because most of its equipment is in continuous operation. However, some of the equipment such as air conditioning systems and AHU systems consume more energy because they have been in operation for a rather long time. Moreover, the old air conditioning system was broken and a new one is being installed.

Main energy sources consumed in the Vaccines and Biologicals Company No 1 are petroleum and electricity, among which the consumption of the former accounted for 26% and the consumption of the latter accounted for 74% of the total energy consumption. Initial calculations show that by implementing energy efficiency measures, the Company can save 19% of its total energy consumption.

With sound management of distribution equipment, particularly electric energy meter systems, and the rational use of electricity, the Company will be able to save about 2% to 10% of its power consumption. This is the first step in energy saving activities in the Company. It is estimated that by saving as low as 2% of power consumption, the company can reduce the expenses by about 126 million VND a year.

By improving the pump system, Vaccines and Biologicals Company No. 1 can also save about 87 thousand kWh of electricity, which is equivalent to nearly 100 million VND each year. As for air compressors, the proposed solution is to install a device that controls all the compressors so that they can operate with full load, thus avoiding reduced performance. It is estimated that this plan will help the company save more than 46 million VND of the Company’s expenses each year.

So far, the AHU and the OAH in the Company have been put in operation for a rather long time and with rather poor performance, which is causing a great loss of power, resulting in so much expense on electricity every month. To address that, the audit team recommended that the Company businesses should gradually replace AHU and OAH with VSD. This solution can be expected to save 155 thousand kWh of electricity per year, which is equivalent to approximately 180 million VND annually.

In the process of checking, auditors also found an imbalance in phases of the power system at the output of the substation as well as harmonics in the poles of the substation. To remedy the situation, aiming at improving the stability and working conditions of electricity supply systems and reducing power losses in the electricity supply system, the Company should install Enerkeeper’s device in order to reduce harmonics which destabilize the performance of the devices. According to the Enerkeeper supplier, the total energy consumption can be reduced by 2% to 10%.

On the other hand, the fuel the Company is using in production is DO fuel with the annual consumption of about 160 thousand liters. This is the fuel of rather high cost. By switching from using DO fuel to FO fuel, the Company can save a significant amount of the expenses for fuel. This solution requires the investment of about 200 million VND in improving ejectors and auxiliary equipment. The payback period is 1.2 years.

In addition, the energy audit team also proposes the installation of heating systems using solar energy. This plan can raise the temperature of the supplied water to 70°C and reduce the fuel consumption of the boiler by 2%.

By Thu An