The original mill is state of the art and equipped with the latest technology boiler. In the crushing season, NASU generates sufficient renewable power to power their sugar mill. Additionally, due to excess bagasse, NASU planned to export power to the EVN national grid. This cogeneration project required support and approval from EVN as well as international technology suppliers who were involved in the initial project including ABB.
Since its establishment, NASU has been using ABB's Automation and drives equipment. Many ABB drives and the original DCS, an ABB Bailey Symphony system, are still running with regular upgrades over their 20-year life.
ABB with proven strength of local manufacturing facilities and being a competent technical partner of NASU, having helped keep their existing power and automation equipment performing at top levels, was selected to provide the power equipment. The orders for switchgear and transformer were placed to ABB in the third quarter of 2015. Local manufacture of ABB equipment made the delivery quicker and made for easier verification of design modifications required during manufacturing. ABB also provided commissioning and startup support from their Engineering Centre in Vietnam.
Engineers from NASU, ABB and other international suppliers worked closely to perform commissioning and startup. Within a short period, after completing factory acceptance tests in the Hanoi factory, the transformer and medium voltage switchgear were delivered. ABB also manufactured an adaptor panel to connect the existing 20-year-old switchgear to the new switchgear. Once all the equipment was in place and connected, the mill was shut down for a few hours while the connections to the network were completed and then the system went live. It was synchronized to the grid and after a trial period, has been generating continuously. The total power NASU has been exporting onto the EVN grids is 4 MW which is approximately effectively equivalent to the power consumption of fourteen thousand (14,000) households in the city.
Located in the north of Nghe An province, the NASU factory crushes approximately one million tons of sugar cane and produces 110,000 tons of sugar per year. It was built in 1996 and commissioned in 1997 by the International Tate and Lyle Group before transferring to TH TrueMilk Group in 2011.
The next phase is a new 32 MW Co-Generation installation with 26 MW being exported to the grid. This is expected to be commissioned around the end of 2017 which will further increase the power generation capacity. ABB intends to continue being a key NASU partner in a relentless effort to reduce the cost of manufacturing and ensure market competitiveness.
