Six times during the previous year the local utility supplying power to a large soap manufacturing plant in the Midwest suffered power outages, shutting down the plant's production lines. Each time the lines went quiet, product hardened requiring the process to be flushed, cleaned, and reset. Even momentary outages caused downtime that could last hours. Productivity halted, costing time and money. Something had to be done about power reliability at the plant. Previously, in pursuit of increased efficiency, management had installed an engine-generator in a combined heat and power (CHP) application. This unit provided supplementary electricity and waste heat to the process.
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