Large industrial facilities have set up captive power generation to mitigate the effect of frequent shortages of electricity from the national grid. 70% of electricity generated under captive power in the case of wind power was set up by large industrial facilities. It’s worthwhile to look at cement industry, which utilizes more energy for its processes.
Industries usually have their own captive power units for cheaper and un-interrupted power supply. Energy cost is almost 40% of manufacturing cost for several manufacturing industries. Solar energy in such industrial facilities can also be used for preheating boiler feed water. They also use captive power plants on rooftops or in parks or other open spaces to meet factories’ lighting loads and pumping water requirements.
It is noteworthy to mention that all the companies are increasingly showing a trend of switching to green energy, speaking of which, Taiwan’s largest cement maker, Taiwan Cement, is looking to build a 100 megawatt plant in their country.
Of the 135 cement industries considered, EAI research analysis shows that about 1085MW capacity diesel captive power plants is under operation. At these places, replacing diesel with solar has huge potential. All of this taken into account, our predictions imply that the use of solar PV in captive power generation could grow by about 30 times (3000%) over the next five years.
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