ABOUT THIS PLANT

The plant, located on the Shannon estuary in County Limerick, Ireland produces over 1.8 million tonnes of alumina (Al2 O3) per annum by treating bauxite ore, a reddish brown earth, using the Bayer process. The plant employs approximately 500 permanent employees along with 200 contractors working in a team-based organisation. Aughinish’s operations directly contribute over €90 million/annum to the local economy. In order to survive in its highly competitive business, Aughinish constantly strives to develop and implement the latest technology and efficiency improvements in order to reduce its energy and raw materials costs. Aughinish has a 150 MW Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant, and an utility electricity demand of in excess of 40MW.

United Company Rusal (Aughinish Alumina)

United Company Rusal (Aughinish Alumina)

HARMONIC AND POWER FACTOR STUDY AND DESIGN

United Company RUSAL (Aughinish Alumina), Ireland’s largest electricity user had a problem with harmonic distortion within their plant. Premium Power Ltd. (www.premiumpower.ie) was chosen to carry out a harmonic study of the plant network and to design and specify a harmonically tuned power factor correction bank suitable for connection at the main supply point to the plant. Premium Power can undertake the largest and most complex investigations. It has extensive expertise in the field of power factor correction and the problems associated with harmonic distortion. Premium Power can solve these problems through the design and implementation of harmonic filtering and power factor correction solutions. Premium Power uses advanced modelling tools and methods to anticipate possible problems. It can design the appropriate solutions so preventing its customers from experiencing unforeseen and costly equipment downtime.

POWER QUALITY STUDIES AND SOLUTIONS

Premium Power Ltd was chosen by United Company RUSAL as a specialist provider of power quality expertise to help it reduce costly downtime due to power quality events occurring within the plant. In addition Premium Power has been chosen to supply and integrate a plant wide power quality monitoring system, which can be used to identify weakness in the electrical network, equipment and protection systems; the consequence of which is enhanced up-time and increased reliability of plant and production system.