Resumen

In the next degree project, an energy management study was carried out at the Montesion ice factory in order to provide a series of proposals to improve conditions and reduce energy consumption. The implementation of this project was carried out in three phases, in the first one the preliminary evaluation of the existing equipment and processes was elaborated with the respective measurements of production, yield, consumptions among others, this was done first dividing the areas of the company in water production, ice production, administrative area and sales. Subsequently, a list was written of all the equipment that consumed electricity in those areas, the power of each of them and the time of use to determine its consumption. In addition, an observation was made of how the productive processes were carried out in order to determine which of them could be incurring in an unnecessary expense of energy. In the second phase, the low voltage system of the energy supply network was characterized through measurements with power analyzers that allow continuous monitoring, in order to establish the quality of the energy and fluctuations in the load of the network. In this phase, all the results obtained were evaluated using the NTC 5001 standard, which defines the evaluation methodologies and the reference values of the parameters associated with the quality of electrical power (ICONTEC, 2008) in addition to evaluating the behaviors and consumption trends of the equipment that represented 80% of the electrical consumption in the factory (ICONTEC, 2008) in addition to evaluating the behaviors and consumption trends of the equipment that represented 80% of the electrical consumption in the factory (ICONTEC, 2008). In light of these measurements it was possible to determine that the system did not present voltage variations or voltage unbalances outside the range, however it was found that the voltage harmonics in line 3 exceeded the limit established by the standard and that the reactive energy in the brine area exceeded the maximum value allowed and therefore the company was being punished by its energy supplier with a fine. In the third, different proposals were put forward to reduce energy consumption and correct problems in the electricity grid. The proposals also included implementing preventive maintenance to improve the working conditions of the equipment, replacing some obsolete equipment with more efficient and less energy consuming equipment, replacing fluorescent lights with LED ones and using thermal insulators in the brine pipes and bucket machines; all these proposals were analyzed from an economic point of view and it was concluded that the investments would be returned in periods of one to four years.