A & G PRICE LTD GOES SOLAR

WHEN Alfred and George

Price opened their foundry and engineering works in Thames, electricity wasn’t even available. In fact it wouldn’t be for another 29 years in August 1899 when the first electric generator was installed in Thames for mine lights at the queen of Beauty mine. Chances are if you told them they would one day run their machines and steel melting furnaces from electricity produced from the sun you would have probably been told you were mad!

But some 150 years later you will find A & G Price Ltd with the largest hybrid solar electric system in New Zealand producing 315kw per hour of electricity to complement their power usage.

Managing director Peter Yates says this aligns with our environmental focus of reducing our carbon footprint while fulfilling current objectives of:

• Not using fossil fuels for our melting furnaces or heat treatment ovens.

• Castings manufactured from 99 percent recycled scrap steel.

• Reclaiming and reusing 90 percent of the sand needed for A&G’S foundry moulds.

• Fabrication, fitting and machine shops running on renewable energy.

This advancement has been made viable by the reducing cost and increased efficiency of solar energy over the last five years.

Skysolar were given the task of measuring our usage and designing a system to give optimum benefit. Their final design comprised of 1016 solar panels capable of producing 310 watts each and battery storage bank of 286kw comprising of 50 batteries.

The system is all controlled by the latest smart technology that can send the power to the plant, the batteries or the national grid and is optimised to monitor and reduce our peak usage – “this is how our yearly power charges are calculated”.

The solar battery array is capable of reducing power usage by up to 1/3 at any given time with the added benefit of being able to supplement the power requirements on the Coromandel Peninsular with the huge influx of visitors over the Christmas holiday period.

Mr Yates says at current power rates,“we are aiming to save $100,000 per year giving a payback of around 8.5 years.” The long term benefits of this will be seen by reduced costs to our customers and employment stability for our staff against ever increasing competition from low cost overseas countries.

As the majority of our steel melting happens during sun shine hours we are also looking at more energy efficient melting furnaces which will complement the power produced from the solar array and give us a more useful melting capacity to tackle smaller steel pours to support New Zealand industries.

As New Zealand’s leading one stop shop for mechanical engineering, manufacturing and refurbishment, the energy from the solar array doesn’t only benefit our foundry. Once the batteries are fully charged the power produced from the panels can also be feed directly to our fabrication, fitting and machine shops. Imagine being able to tell your customers your components have been welded together or machined using electricity produced from the sun.

While it’s a huge challenge for any manufacturer to be carbon neutral, Mr Yates says the call for change is gathering momentum from the younger generations and governments and industries around the world will be forced to change.

Wanting to be ahead of the game has changed our attitude to thinking greener, which has allowed us to make this significant step in the right direction and of course these improvements don’t stop here.

The next step will be replacing the existing energy hungry lights with energy efficient LED lighting and we are always looking for new technologies and ways to improve our efficiency and capabilities to meet our customers’ ever- changing requirements.

Whether it’s a single or mass produced casting, fabrication, cleverly machined component or refurbishment of your favourite piece of machinery, talk with the team at AGP and let them help you on your way to becoming carbon neutral by using it’s solar power and recycling systems to manufacture your next piece of equipment.