A major European supplier of wood pellet fired boilers has upgraded its products through the introduction of variable speed AC drives from Control Techniques.
Latvian company Grandeg manufactures a range of wood pellet fuelled boilers with heat outputs between 15 and 500 kW, for domestic and commercial installations. The company sees the biggest growth potential for these boilers in the domestic sector in northern Europe, Russia and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Grandeg consulted with Control Techniques’ area representative who proposed a new system of control for the screw feeders to reduce energy and maintenance costs and improve performance. Fractional kW Commander SK AC drives have replaced a logic-controller, contactor and thermal relay to provide smooth and accurate control of the screw-feed which supplies pellets to the boiler.
The compact dimensions of Control Technique’s Commander SK AC drives provided panel savings of up to 30%
The result has been a product with much better performance and with greater reliability. “It is also much quieter in operation,” says Grandeg’s owner, Andris Lubins.
“The relay was proving to be too noisy for a domestic setting. Now the whole system starts, and runs, almost silently,” he says. “Because of the reduced stresses on the bearings and other components, reliability is enhanced and lifetime costs significantly reduced. And 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 drive has also reduced the size of the control cabinet by 30% and panel building costs are less too. The drive features dynamic braking, Modbus, PID control, an EMC filter, fieldbus options, extensive memory, task scheduling, basic closed-loop and positioning control.
The Commander SK is simple to fit and easy to program. Copying parameters from one unit to another is trivial using the SK’s SmartStick plug-in option.
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