Energy incentives to industry for power factor correction

The FOI and the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association (MHRA), in collaboration with Enemalta Corporation, jointly organised an information meeting for their members last Thursday at the Central Administration Building, Marsa Power Station.

The focus of this information meeting was an introduction to the new tariff rate, outlined in Legal Notice 99/2003, which was formulated for high consumption commercial and industrial consumers who seek to improve their energy efficiency.

This new tariff gives a clear incentive to interested parties to correct the power factor of their equipment and is only available to enterprises having three-phase electricity installations with a load of over 100 amps per phase.

Two Enemalta officials, Ing. Charles Grixti, manager Consumer Services, and Ing. John Tonna, who is in charge of electricity metering, delivered presentations at this very well attended information meeting, explaining the advantages that firms stand to benefit from under this new tariff provided they are ready to make the necessary investment.

Lower electricity bills will mean a payback period of their investment in a relatively short time. Following the presentations, a number of questions were raised from the floor. Most of these were of a technical nature reflecting the mix of those who attended, most of them engineers.

The following advice was given regarding questions raised:

¤ the practice, in general, is to install Power Factor Correcting Equipment (PFCE) at source, as this tends to be more economical;

¤ one should check for harmonics at the point of installation and take appropriate action to minimise their effect by installing filters;

¤ large variations in load, between peak load and minimum load, should be investigated and exercise undertaken to minimise the variation prior to calculating the value of PFCE;

¤ the type of PFCE should be automatic so that it will follow the load variations and, therefore, always match the load;

¤ the installation of the new electricity meter will only take a few minutes and, especially when it involves the switching off of the site, it can be done at a time that is convenient for the customer. In some cases where a new electronic-type meter is already installed no switching off will be required but only programming is involved;

¤ from the submission of the application (Form E) it should take only a few days to get the meter installation done; and

¤ Enemalta Corporation is already changing old mechanical meters to electronic ones, but the new tariff will only become applicable if the customer submits the application (Form E).