In the future Amagerforbrændingen will save DKK 500,000 every year in energy taxes. This was the unexpected but positive additional benefit from the energy review of the plant carried out by FORCE Technology.

The energy review showed that the plant's heating meter, which measures the plant's own consumption of heat, had to be defective and that the measurement was far too high. The plant pays taxes to the government according to its own consumption of heat, and because of the extraordinarily high consumption of heat the plant has paid an excess tax of DKK 500,000 each year.

Reconstruction

"In recent years we have carried out some extensive reconstruction works at the plant, for example an increase in the capacity of the boilers and the installation of yet another steam turbine, which means that we now produce even more electricity and heating", says Poul Bach Olsen, operating manager at Amagerforbrændingen.

"We must admit that with the large reconstruction work carried out we have not had the necessary resources to focus on the day-to-day operation of our plant and the ordinary heating consumption for room heating, and we are now trying to rectify this situation.

This is where FORCE Technology entered the picture as our sparring partner in an area where it is very advantageous for us to buy external expertise. We had for a long time suspected that there was something wrong with our energy consumption – because it was so high – and therefore we initiated the analysis", says Poul Bach Olsen.

The analysis

Karsten Mehlsen was on the team from FORCE Technology that mapped out the energy consumption in order to find out what it was used for, in respect of electricity and heating.

Karsten Mehlsen says: ”The consumption measured by the meter was far higher than any energy consumption for a building like this one you can possibly image. This became very clear when we mapped out the energy consumption.

We recommended that the plant should install a new meter in series with the old one, and the figures from the new meter have now indicated to us that there is a factor five to ten between the old measured consumption and the actual consumption.

We have analysed the old meter, and we have made the conclusion that it does not conform to the current standard of heating meters, but it was probably never meant to be used as a billing meter when it was installed. When the new energy tax legislation was introduced 10 years ago the old meter was already in use, and therefore it was easy to continue to use it", says Karsten Mehlsen.

Repayment

There is a good chance that Told & Skat (Danish customs and tax authority) will repay approx. DKK 1.5 million to the plant in excess taxes for the last three years. It is not possible, within the framework of the energy tax legislation, to go further back in time.

FORCE Technology has now been engaged to prepare a proposal for negotiations with Told & Skat.

In addition to the reduced energy charges the actual energy consumption can also be reduced. Although the analysis showed that the majority of the heat energy consumption was "fictitious consumption" there is also a real energy consumption, and according to FORCE Technology it may very well be possible to reduce the consumption, especially by adjusting the distribution of the flow in the heating system.