What do a new hydraulic press motor and synchronous belts save in a Jamnagar brass unit?

The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) Jamnagar manual credits a 150 horsepower press motor swap with 2.34 kilowatts, 7,020 kilowatt hours (kWh) a year, rupees (Rs) 0.42 lakh, payback 3.57 years. Synchronous belts on a 15 horsepower drive save 1,700 kWh and pay back in 1 year.

The press motor

• The manual found press motors loaded at 40 to 60%, which pulls efficiency and power factor down. It proposes an efficient motor of suitable rating.
• Table 3.13: 150 horsepower motor drawing 67 kilowatts at its existing load. Rated efficiency 91% today, 94.3% for the new one. Saving 2.34 kilowatts over 3,000 hours is 7,020 kWh, Rs 0.42 lakh at Rs 6. Cost Rs 1.5 lakh, payback 3.57 years.
• My check: 67 x (1 minus 91 / 94.3) = 2.34. So the saving is the efficiency gap on the same load. The table does not say what smaller rating it swaps to, and a smaller motor would also help power factor, which is not counted in kilowatts here.
• Also my check, and only roughly: 150 horsepower is about 112 kilowatts. The 67 kilowatts is input power at the existing load, not shaft output. At 91% efficiency shaft output is about 61 kilowatts, about 54% of 112, inside the manual's 40 to 60% range.

The synchronous belts

• The manual gives V belts a transmission efficiency of 93% and synchronous belts 98%, and lists longer life and 20 to 50% narrower pulleys.
• Table 3.14: 15 horsepower motor, 10.20 kilowatts input with V belts and 9.78 with synchronous belts. The gap is 0.42, printed 0.43. Over 4,000 hours the saving is printed as 1,700 kWh (4,000 x 0.43 = 1,720; x 0.42 = 1,680). Rs 0.10 lakh, cost Rs 0.10 lakh, payback 1 year.
• The 93 and 98% would give a larger gap: 10.20 x 93 / 98 = 9.68 kilowatts, so 0.52 saved, not 0.43. So the table is the cautious reading (my check).
• Barriers: products not stocked locally and high cost.

Across the cluster

Table 5.1 counts 120 units for the motor swap (843,120 kWh, with 7,026 kWh a unit in that table against 7,020 in the body) and 1,500 units for belts (2,550,000 kWh). On 0.675 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) a kWh for financial year (FY) 2025-26, that is about 569 and 1,721 tonnes a year. The belts are the largest electricity saving of the thirteen measures only because so many units fit them. Neither was short-listed for a detailed project report.

Your belts, your numbers (example)

• A 15 horsepower drive on V belts reads 10.20 kilowatts on a meter, running 4,000 hours: 40,800 kWh
• Synchronous belts at the manual's 9.78 kilowatts: 39,120 kWh. Saving 1,680 kWh
• CO2: 1,680 x 0.675 = about 1.1 tonnes a year
• Money at Rs 6 a kWh: Rs 10,080, so Rs 0.10 lakh of belts pays back in about a year

The 10.20 and 9.78 kilowatts and 4,000 hours are the manual's. Grid factor is the Central Electricity Authority's (CEA) FY 2025-26 figure, an estimate for your bill year.

What Senseible does here

Self-serve, Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records; machine meters are custom, on request. Electricity units by month are on file, and the hours of use come from your own log.

• Your carbon number for buyers and banks
• Jamnagar brass cluster energy and carbon
• Jamnagar cooling tower timers and blades

Sources: BEE, Manual on energy conservation measures in brass cluster Jamnagar (Winrock International India), CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0

Last reviewed 2026-11-06. Figures are from BEE's Jamnagar manual, which prints no year on the pages used. Re-check the grid factor for the year of your bill.