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Chocolate manufacturer Campco can teach others a thing or two about energy conservation on the occasion of World Environment Day today. The cooperative’s efforts to switch over a major part of its chocolate manufacturing process from traditional fuel-based energy sources to wind and bio-fuels have helped it save around ₹3 crore a year.
Suresh Bhandary, Managing Director of Campco (Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative) Ltd, told Business Line that non-conventional energy sources have contributed a significant share to many of the processes at its chocolate factory in Puttur near here. This has helped the cooperative save around ₹3 crore in power cost a year.
A major portion of the factory’s operations involves generation of steam to run boilers. Prior to 2007, the factory was using around 600 kilo litres of furnace oil a year to run boilers. That year, it replaced furnace oil with bio-briquettes, which are made out of agro wastes available in the region. The use of bio-briquettes brought down the cost of steam production by 70 per cent.
The cooperative, which invested around ₹1 crore in the project, recovered the cost in eight months. Bhandary said that the cooperative has been saving around ₹1.2 crore a year on steam production for running the boilers since then.
Wind factorCampco’s decision to go in for wind power generation in 2009 too is paying dividends as the power tariffs have been increasing every year. Campco has a total installed wind power capacity of 2.95 MW in three units (one in Hoovinahadagali taluk and two units in Chikkodi taluk in Karnataka).
The total power requirement of the factory is around 58 lakh units a year. Of this, wind power contributes around 46 lakh units a year.
“ We use around 12 lakh units of grid power a year, and the rest comes from our windmills,” he said. The cost of wind power production works out at ₹3.90 a unit. Grid power costs ₹6.20 a unit. As a result , the cooperative is saving more than ₹1 crore a year in power consumption costs at the chocolate factory, he said. The factory uses also vapour absorption mechanism to run the air-conditioning system, which cuts costs.
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