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One of Europe's leading suppliers of boilers, for use with wooden pellets as fuel, has upgraded its products, saving costs and cutting operating noise, with the introduction of variable speed AC drives from Control Techniques.
SIA GRANDEG, based in Latvia, manufactures a range of wood pellet fuel boilers with heat outputs between 15 and 500 kW, for both domestic and commercial installations. The biggest growth potential for this successful and rapidly expanding company is seen to be in the domestic sector in northern Europe, Russia and other (CIS) countries, where a sophisticated product is required.
As part of its drive to develop its product range for these export markets, GRANDEG brought in Control Techniques' representatives in the area, EMT of Riga, who proposed a new system of control of the screw feeders to improve performance and reduce energy and maintenance costs. Now, 0.25 and 0.5 kW Commander SK AC drives are being provided to give smooth and accurate control of the screw-feed motors to give a supply of wood pellets.
This system replaces a logic-controller, contactor and thermal relay. Now, as the boiler demands more fuel, the drive is accelerated up to the required speed and ramped down as demand falls. Control Techniques also provides drive programming on a LogicStick.
The result has been a product with much better performance and with greater reliability. "It is also much quieter in operation," says Mr. Andris Lubins, owner of company GRANDEG.
"The relay was proving to be too noisy for a domestic setting and now the whole system starts, and runs, almost silently," he says. "Because of the reduced stresses on the bearings and other components, the general reliability and lifetime costs are much reduced. What's more, because the drive has comprehensive diagnostics on its screen, most often problems can be resolved with a telephone call, eliminating the costs and resources required for a call-out."
The introduction of the Commander SK has even reduced the size of the control cabinet by some 30% and panel building costs are less too.
As standard the Commander SK is simple to fit and can be programmed for most tasks in a matter of minutes, inputting just 10 basic parameters on the front-mounted keypad. This is one of many unusual, if not unique, practical features that have been designed into the Commander SK to meet customer demands of ease-of-use and versatility. Copying parameters from one unit to another was never simpler with the SK's SmartStick plug-in option.
For OEMs, the Commander SK dimensioning allows high installation density, saving significantly on control cubicle size and installed cost and is packed with features that reflect its benchmark status in the general purpose drives market -dynamic braking, ModBus, PID control, EMC filter, fieldbus options, extensive memory, basic closed-loop and positioning control - even task scheduling!
The technological partnership between EMT / Control Techniques and GRANDEG is the key to the success of this new line of products in the world market. GRANDEG confidently predicts the production of some 800 domestic systems of this type, primarily for export, in this next year. Its range, with an energy coefficient of 93%, offers low-costs of heating, low maintenance costs, a 5-year guarantee and an environmentally friendly, zero-carbon space heating solution.
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KEY ADVANTAGES
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? REDUCED ConTROL CABINET SIZE & COST
? REDUCES ENERGY & MAINTENANCE COSTS
? IMPROVED PERFORMANCE & GREATER RELIABILITY
? SMOOTH & ACCURATE CONTROL
? CUTS OPERATING NOISE
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