100 Years of Energy and Industry - The Age of Electricity

"The effect of this enormous development of power on the Canadian side (of the Niagara River) in connection with the manufacturing industries of Ontario can hardly be estimated… It will mean large factories will spring up into existence, employing large number of men and creating a hive of manufacturing industry in Western Ontario that in a few years will compare favorably with the manufacturing output of the New England States."
Canadian Machinery and Manufacturing News, February 1905

In 1905, the founding editors of this magazine predicted that electrical power would revolutionize industry in Canada. Although the power plants at Niagara Falls were still under construction, the magazine was sufficiently confident to describe itself as "a monthly paper devoted to the machinery and electrical trades and to all users of power". Based on the events that followed, they couldn't have called it better.

The opening of the first hydroelectric generators at Niagara Falls, and the subsequent forming of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, were seminal events in the history of machinery and metalworking. Hydroelectric power was cheap, but more important, it made it much easier to transmit power to grinders, lathes, presses, and other tools of the metalworking trade. This allowed factories to be organized for efficiency, bringing in the era of the efficient assembly line and eventually, the lean manufacturing environments of today.

Rising energy prices got the ball rolling. A coal miners' strike in the US resulted in municipalities and industries having to import expensive coal from Europe, and politicians worried about the economic impact. (Does this sound familiar?) London-based industrialist and MPP Adam Beck saw the potential for publicly-owned generation facility on the Niagara River. Under Beck's leadership, Hydro was founded, and Canada became a global leader in the production of hydroelectric power.

Hydro's new facilities produced an abundance of power, but the high-capacity transmission infrastructure needed to service distant factories had yet to be built. As a result, the nearby Niagara Peninsula became a key industrial area, especially for grinding and other electrical-intensive processes. For industries whose processes consume large amounts of energy, proximity can still be a factor. For example, Alcan located a huge, energy-intensive aluminum plant in Quebec's Saguenay-Lac Saint Jean region because it is the home of a 3000MW hydroelectric facility.

Powered machine tools of the pre-electrical period were driven by huge steam-propelled line shafts that ran through factories. Jamie Smith, System Specialist from Toronto-based engineering firm MCW Consulting, explains, "The big change in the early part of the 20th century was moving away from steam power to electrical power. Typically, turn of the century and WW1 metalworking factories had powered equipment, but it was driven by overhead shafts with big long leather belts. There would be a prime mover at one end of the shop." The prime mover was typically a huge steam engine with a coal-fired boiler, along with classic smokestack, located next to it.

This system had a number of drawbacks. Smith explains, "The problem was not so much the inefficiency, but the lack of versatility. You couldn't change anything. If you wanted to move a workstation, it was a major operation, as compared to today when you just run an extension cord. So the inefficiencies resulted from work processes changing and the machinery not being able to change with them."

The Hamilton Museum of Steam and Technology, located in Hamilton, Ontario, provides visitors with an unusual glimpse of that period. Mac Swachammer, Acting Curator, explains how steam-powered factories were laid out. "If you're going to transmit power to a belt and pulley system, the further away you get from the engines, the more you've lost through friction and other kinds of power loss. So big factories were arranged according to the power requirements of their tools. Which meant that 40 – 50% of the people in the factory were hired to move stuff around. Raw materials to machines, fabricated materials to another place, etc. You couldn't have what one might call an efficient assembly line."

Safety was also an issue. As Smith points out, the boilers pre-dated standards for pressure vessels, and under the high pressure required for steam engines, boiler explosions were frequent. Working close to moving drive belts was a hazard as well. "These open leather belts were extremely dangerous. People were always getting their arms and ties and stuff caught in them, and a lot of people were getting killed."

Electricity enabled factories to move away from these methods, but small and inexpensive electric motors were not available until the WW1 period. In the early part of the century, large electric motors were simply retrofitted to replace the steam engine as the prime mover. The introduction of the motor as a localized power source for machine tools developed gradually. By the 1930's motors were small and light enough to power desk fans. Says Smith, "One milestone was the development of unitary equipment, like a lathe that has its own electric motor that you put anywhere, with a power cord running to it. That would mean you could put the lathe anywhere you wanted it, it didn't have to line up with the big shaft. You could turn it off while something else is on, you could work on one while another one is running, and you could also replace it without redoing the whole shop."

Electrical power was not the only way to decentralize the powering of tools. In the years before lightweight electric motors, compressed air was introduced to transmit energy to the first power hand tools. Says Smith, "What the hand tools have done is affected an enormous increase in human productivity. I mean, a guy with a power drill can drill holes so much faster than a guy with a hand drill, or running over to a punch press."

For the remainder of the century, electricity played a major role in the evolution from large, centralized machines to smaller, more localized equivalents. As discussed in recent issues of CMM, this was key in the evolution of metal forming, welding, and other aspects of metalworking. Much of this development was possible due to smaller electric motors with better control.

Decentralization continued to shape manufacturing strategy and culture. The large highly centralized plant of the pre-electrical period was managed according to the theories of Frederick Taylor, who believed that workers are most productive when they are given simple, repetitive, clearly defined jobs. Later theories held that workers do a better job when they are empowered to take ownership of the quality of their work. This assumption was a cornerstone of the industrial quality revolution that began with J. Edwards Deming's work with Japanese industry in the 1950's. Electricity gave industry the flexibility to locate equipment in order to accommodate human as well as mechanical processes.

In the 1970's, machinery with electronic controls began to appear. These made it possible for industry to automate various work components, and reduce dependence on labour. However, it introduced a dependence on an aspect of power that had never been considered: power quality. While the occasional voltage sag doesn't affect a large electric motor, it can quickly cause a CNC machine to crash. Jim Patterson, Manager of Customer Business Relations for Hydro One, paints the following scenario. "What happens is let's say there's a car accident and a wire falls down. The customers connected to that wire get interrupted, so the power goes off. But during the second or 2 while those conductors are shorting out, it draws the power down on all the adjacent circuits. So every will feel, for about a second or 2, a voltage dip. And so the fuses blow on the line. So everybody gets up to a 25% voltage dip. And sometimes the controls can't manage that. So even if the lights only flickered, it could cause a problem to their processes, because they are so automated. So it takes them a while sometimes to get things going again. They have to reset everything, you know. They don't have the number of people sitting there. Because of more automation, they're more sensitive to reliability and power quality."

Power quality continues to be an issue, but the even larger issue of power quantity come to the fore in the 1980's when the era of cheap energy, which had begun in 1905, came to an end. Hydroelectric power was maxed out, and decision makers started looking towards alternative sources. Darlington power station was built amid controversy about the perils of nuclear power. As well, concerns about greenhouse gas emissions were coming to the forefront. As a result, the era of conservation began.

For many, this was brand new issue. According to Brian Malloch, President of 21st Century Industry Solutions, "nobody thought about power consumption 50 years ago. It was part of doing business, like paying taxes." For energy-intensive industries like pulp and paper, the new reality had immediate effects, but for the average machine shop, energy costs were still fairly small compared to labour and capital machinery costs. "Machinery and metalworking is in the 3 to 5 percent range as far as proportion of their costs. But in newsprint and paper mills, you're up to 30 or 40 percent."

Dramatic moves to save energy have therefore been in those energy-intensive industries, as Malloch illustrates. "Abitibi-Consolidated, at their mill in Thorold, Ont., used to have a state of the art - and I guess they still have it there - mechanical pulp. These are 10 and 15 thousand horsepower motors that turn wood chips into pulp. They're all shut down. They're 100% recycled paper now in that mill. And so their energy use per ton of newsprint has gone way down."

Conserving energy is a tougher sell in the machinery and metalworking area even when it results in bottom line savings. Explains Patterson, "In a lot of industry today, they don't look at energy savings the way they look at a production improvement. Let's say you make a production improvement and save an additional 10K per year. They would go ahead with that – with a 5K cost to implement it – they would go ahead with that in a minute. But if you had the same thing – cost you 5K to save 10K in energy – they'll procrastinate that one forever. Because they're more focused on production than on saving energy, even though they both have the same bottom line impact."

Caught between the threat of brownouts and the very high capital costs of capacity expansion, Hydro had to persuade industry to change their thinking. "We found that we had to provide something at every stage of the process. Identify the opportunities. Help do the business case and feasibility studies. And then provide additional help to actually implement the project. We had to do that to make them happen." However, these efforts proved successful. "We saved 200 megawatts a year, back in those days."

As energy prices get higher and margins in manufacturing get tighter, these energy saving measures are starting to look more attractive. For European companies, who might face energy costs triple that of North America, energy conservation is a way of life. Malloch sees this coming here, and has observed a change in attitudes in North America. "I think that the whole position that industry has (recently) taken… is that the cost to produce is the only thing that they can control. There's a cost to produce, what the market is willing to pay for it, and the difference is your profits. If you can eliminate some of the waste out of the cost to produce, then your profits will increase. And energy is something that has got an immediate return and may not have any cost associated with doing it."

There are a number of practical measures that can be taken. Motors are in general becoming more efficient, and because high efficiency motors produce less heat, they also reduce the load on air conditioning systems. Variable speed motors are also used in order to consume only the amount of energy necessary. Soft-start motors are also used. These eliminate the high current draw required to start conventional motors, reducing the peak load on the electrical service, resulting in lower power rates. Many factories also implement systems to retrieve lost heat, and savings can be substantial.

Malloch recommends that companies implement an energy strategy, where energy gets considered alongside other benefits whenever a business case for a significant expenditure is being developed. "It's an expensive position for companies to take in doing that retrofit, and rarely is it budgeted for from an energy perspective. It's budgeted for as an upgrade in technology or replacing aging equipment that has a stronger potential for failure. I would leave that topic by saying that energy needs to be part of the procurement process for new or retrofitted equipment."

Some of the biggest savings can be found by implementing technologies which in themselves are not necessarily energy-efficient. Fred Grohs is Canada's Regional Manager for German Machinery Manufacturer Strumpf, explains. "When use electricity to make a laser beam, it is a rather inefficient way. It's about 7% efficient – you need 100 watts of energy to make 7 watts of laser power. And of course most of that turns to heat, which you have to deal with." However, from a production standpoint, lasers can be highly efficient, and this can dramatically reduce the run time per manufactured part for not only the laser, but related equipment as well. Grohs sums it up: "Focus and attention is always on how fast it can produce a part, at what accuracy and what repeatability, and the cost of energy becomes a small factor of that."

Malloch predicts that within the next decade, factories in Canada will be forced to adopt the energy strategies of their European counterparts. A good glimpse at this future way can be seen in a standard called ISO14001. This establishes a mandatory framework for setting up what is called an EMS, or an environmental management system. Among other environmental considerations, there is a strong focus in saving energy.

Goodyear Tire operates a plant in Napanee, Ontario that has been ISO14001-compliant for the past 4 years. Travis Monnier, a Business Team Leader in the plant, explains the transition. "We're sort of a culture of continuous improvement here, in all aspects of our business, so energy is in that arena. We've gone through numerous improvement projects around everything to lighting to our boiler use to compressed air. We continue to look at that trying to drill down and continuously improve that."

A very visible aspect of this project is a solar wall that captures energy for use in the plant. The payback on the wall is too long to justify a major project, but it positions Goodyear for a future where energy costs are much higher. "With regard to payback, we normally look at one to two years. The solar wall at that time was going to be 5 years, but on a pilot basis in a small warehouse on site here we're okay for that with intentions of someday putting it on a larger part of the building." With significantly higher energy prices, that payback period could drop dramatically, and Goodyear will be ready to roll.