Freefoam Building Products - Energy Monitoring System

Company Overview

Freefoam Building Products is a manufacturer of PVC-U and PVC-UE building products including a wide range of fascias, soffits, rainwater systems, external cladding and interior decorative paneling. Freefoam’s PVC products offer house builders, local authorities, developers and installers a high-quality, low-maintenance alternative to conventional timber. 

Freefoam has achieved the prestigious EcoVadis Silver medal in recognition of the company’s commitment to sustainable business practice.

Project Objectives

• Identify significant energy users and their usage pattern and eliminate out-of-hour usage.
• Install metering throughout the facility on Significant Energy User’s (SEU’s) associated with the production process. This includes measurement of incoming electricity and sub-distribution infrastructure throughout the facility as identified within our metering plan.
• Due to the nature of production, i.e. I.P. (Ingress protection), suitable protective metering will be used that will measure real power, reactive power and apparent power and will also review current readings as well as voltage. The expected accuracy is 0.5% to 1.5%, which will be measured in half-hour intervals. The data will be transferred via a data logger and SIM card to an online energy measurement software system, which is available via online access.

Results

• An accurate measurement of company energy profile.
• Established cross-department energy team, ensuring ongoing management and improvements to their production process.
• Informing a renewable energy plan, including solar PV.
• Changing to low-energy vacuum systems achieved 10% energy savings for that subsystem.
• Customers require Freefoam to measure and reduce their carbon footprint year on year. They have a baseline to start from and help reduce carbon footprint
   

Find out more

Explore sustainability supports available to Enterprise Ireland clients: Improve sustainability | Business Support | Enterprise Ireland