Severstal’s big efforts to become more energy efficient were rewarded with a big check Tuesday.
Tennessee Valley Authority officials presented the automotive steel manufacturer with $2.5 million for reducing its usage 25,251,390 kilowatt-hours. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant joined Severstal and TVA officials to mark the occasion at the Lowndes County plant.
Barry Steele, power distribution and energy products supervisor for Severstal, said the feat was achieved by installing high-efficiency fans and optimized them by matching them exactly to the needs of their electric furnace.
“If you had a small oscillating fan in your house and you ran it every day, all day, it would make your electricity bill go up,” he said. “That might be a quarter of a horsepower. These fans are four of them at 2,7000 horsepower. The energy they consume is a lot of small cities. Power, flow, pressure — these things follow certain laws as you change the speed of a fan. We took advantage of that by slowing the fan down when we don’t need it and speeding up when we do need it and using that oscillation with a high-efficiency fan.”
That reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 30,000 tons a year and electrical energy by 25 million kilowatt hours per year, he said. Electric arc furnace energy costs also fell by around 70 cents a ton and fan maintenance costs are down 80 percent, he said.
TVA director of energy efficiency Cindy Herron said the alliance between TVA and Severstal on striving for cleaner, more efficient energy will continue as the steel production company moves forward on other energy-saving projects.
“TVA enjoys a strong, historic partnership with Mississippi, and today that partnership is even stronger when we see we’re increasing our economic development opportunities through energy efficiency efforts,” Herron said. “Energy efficiency and economic development are closely intertwined. We see that in this largest single energy efficiency project in the Valley, right here in Mississippi at this world-class manufacturing facility.”
After the conference, Bryant alluded to a $15 million low-interest loan program through the Mississippi Development Authority approved by legislators that other facilities could use to do what Severstal has done.
“This is the beginning, I think, of a pattern that you’ll see with other manufacturers once they realize TVA is incentivizing the potential for energy efficiency,” the governor said. “Two years ago we were the worst state in America for energy efficiency, both from the residential and the commercial side. (As) part of my Energy Works agenda we said we were going to turn that around. Simply by adding new fans, high-tech smart fans here in their cooling systems, (Severstal was) able to save about $2.5 million on their energy, and this is just the beginning of a movement across the state.”
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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