Ingemetal Solar Finds The Right Tube Cutting Solution
Looking at the ever increasing demand, the Indian Government is continuously looking for ways to increase the power generation capacity. Having said this, one cannot deny that one of the best ways to achieve this is by utilising the solar energy that is abundantly available in India.
Apart from the government, private companies and various households have also adopted solar energy to fulfil their day-to-day requirement. This has led to a significant increase in the demand for solar panels and related equipment in the country. This demand has certainly called for technologies that can build equipment at faster rate thus increasing the productivity. Flexibility of the equipment is also of paramount importance since each project would require parts with different nature in terms of dimensions, weight and geometrical configuration depending upon the project location and size.
There are various companies that provide equipment directly or indirectly.
Ingemetal Solar is one such company who is involved in providing complete solar solution. Ingemetal Solar, part of Ingemetal Group, was launched as a company in 2006 who has become a full vertical, Integrated solar supplier. Since its inception, Ingemetal has been involved in seven parabolic trough plants. Today, it has become the leading fabricator of parabolic mirror support systems with close to 350 MW of thermo solar energy power plants installed in different countries in the world.
When Spain-based Ingemetal Solar, that also has a manufacturing base in Pune supplied the tubular mirror support structures for the 50MW CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) project installed near Jaiselmer, Rajasthan, India, they extensively used BLM Group Adige’s LT120 Laser tube cutting machine. It was used to cut the tubes required for fabricating these supports. The LT120 automatic laser tube cutting system is best suited for cutting thin walled metallic tubes up to 120 mm diameter generally used in the most important industrial sectors. The machine can also be efficiently used for simple operations like straight cuts. Starting from a tube bundle, all the cutting process (holes, slots, end-cuts etc.) are automatically carried out and a finished ready-to-weld component is unloaded from the machine. Some of its key features include low running costs, proven system reliability, easy and fast production changeovers and fully automatic work cycle.
A CSP plant generally uses Parabolic trough system. In this, the sunlight is is focussed with a parabolic mirror and directed onto an absorber tube located at the focus of the parabolic mirrors. This way, the heat transfer fluid inside the tube is heated and fed into a heat exchanger where it generates steam for the power plant block. The steam drives a turbine to generate electricity the same way a conventional power plants does. If the mirror support structures are not precise and rigid, the mirrors mounted on them will not be able to concentrate the sun rays properly on the tube containing heat transfer fluid and the efficiency of the power plant will go down. So the structures have to be precise and without any residual stresses. The residual stresses are reduced if the weld joints are properly prepared and welded. The laser tube cutting machine plays an important role in preparing the said weld joints.
Joaquin Gracia, Director – Operations, Ingemetal Solar India Pvt Ltd who was directly involved in the projects says, “The power plant has 120 loops on 48 collectors. There are 28 mirrors per collector. Ingemetal processed a total of 6,000 tonnes of tube for this project. The tubes were then welded together to get the support structure.”
The tube sizes used for this project were 30x30x2, 40x40x1, 40x40x1.5, 140x70x5, 140x70x10, 120x80x8 and 120x80x10 mm. A total of 2,000 tonnes of tubes were cut and welded to fabricate around 3,000 tonnes support sturctures.
More than 75% of the tubes used were of 40x40x1 mm and 40x40x1.5 mm. A small part of the cut tubes were imported from Spain. Those were also cut on Adige’s laser tube cutting machines.
Talking about the complexity of the project, Gracia says, “The components we require to make are solar components, the complexity of which can be compared with aeronautic requirements, means very high accuracy and very tight tolerances i.e. 0.1mm, only in this way possible to reach the best efficiency which will give the optimised electrical generations to our clients.”
Ingemetal Solar was looking for laser cutting machines that can produce extremely complex part at a faster rate. The company did its own market survey to understand the reputation of the brand, its efficiency and reputation and finally zeroed down to BLM LT120 Laser tube cutting machine in 2007.
“The kind of activities we do are very precise, we do not wish to take any chances with our quality therefore we went for BLM machine. It was necessary for us to have a high quality proven machine to do our complex jobs and as per our understanding BLM fits to our expectations,” says Gracia.
Before using BLM LT120, Ingemetal Solar was not able to produce the kind of product they expected to. It all changed after the BLM machine came into the picture. With the use of the machine they are able to offer quality products at competitive prices to clients and help make the market develop.
Elaborating on this Gracia says, “Our overall productivity has gone up by 20%, beating our own expectation, hence it has helped us generate more business and helped us fulfill our commitments on or before time.”
BLM is also very particular about the sales and service. Engineers from BLM frequently visit the customers facility for routine check-up of the machines. If required, they also provide time-to-time training and assistance to the customers .
Satisfied with the service Gracia says, “The operating speed and the kind of output this machine delivers makes it unique among various competitive brands available. The after sales service is fantastic in Europe and they are putting in efforts to provide the similar kind of services in India. I would like to highlight that their online support is effective across the globe. For the past seven years we are using the BLM machine and our experience with the company is satisfactory.”BLM has unique online support system in place, all the machines are connected thro’ internet for Tele-Diagnosis so that BLM’s after sales service engineers can access the machine to help operators to solve problems, update software etc. Apart from telephonic support, web-based video connection is also used to facilitate the customer service.
Ingemetal is one such company that takes extra efforts to educate its vendors and spread awareness about the latest technologies.
“As per our policy we support our vendors with the information about the best solutions available and persuade them to invest in the best technologies. Following our policy we are making our Indian vendors aware of the benefits of BLM tube laser machine and trying to convince them to invest in the machines to get the best productivity and to be more competitive,” avers Gracia.
India being a price concious market poses as the biggest challenge for companies functioning here. There are many who do not realise that investing in technology will help them in the long run.
Talking about experience in Indian industry Gracia opines, “In India business houses prefer to invest more on man power than technology. Contrary to this belief we are trying to educate and make our suppliers and customers understand the benefit of the technology and the machine, as in the longer run it will not only be more effective as it will help better production, but also be more accurate and cheaper. We hope and expect that we will be able to convince our vendors to go for BLM machine.”
Just like Ingemetal, there are many happy customers of BLM worldwide, but Gracia hopes to witness BLM having a stronger presence in India. Talking about the future plans Vinayak Joshi, Market Development Manager (for India) from BLM Group confirms that BLM is in process of strengthening its presence in the Indian market.
