Accelerator Program – Motor Industry

Background:
There are approximately 400 motor and pump manufacturers within Pakistan (motors and pumps are included as one group as the majority of pump producers actually manufacture the motor/drive section and assemble with the pump casing and pump impeller is typically purchased from a third-party supplier). Producers are located throughout Pakistan, but the vast majority are located in the town of Gujranwala (approximately 80%) with a smaller hub in Faisalabad.
Market Structure:

Pakistan’s motor industry can be divided into two categories with respect to size; these are: less than 5kW and greater than 5kW. Most of the motors produced locally are below 5kW, while the larger motors are mostly imported or purchased second-hand. The majority of locally produced motors are single-phase, while three-phase motors make up less than 10% of local production. The most common sizes range from 0.5hp to 3hp motors. [0.37 KW to 2.2 KW]

Sales & Stock:

Based on CLASP 2019 report on motors, total sales of locally produced single phase motors in 2018 are estimated at 990,000. The distribution of single-phase sales is centered around the 0.37-2.2 kW range given the primary demand stems from domestic and small agricultural pumps. Total sales of three-phase motors below 5kW are almost an order of magnitude smaller at approximately 140,000 units per annum. For three-phase motors above 5kW, total sales are much lower at just over 41,000 (of which approximately 20,000 are from local manufacturers but restricted to the 5- 12kW range). These motors are used in applications in the industrial and larger commercial sector. Within this segment more than 70% of sales fall within the 5.5- 15 kW range, after which sales fall exponentially to around 150 motors a year above 400kW. Overall, in 2022 around 17.5 million electric motors were installed in Pakistan, a number projected to rise to 25 million by 2030. Collectively these motors were consuming approximately 84TWh of electricity annually, costing industrial, commercial and domestic consumers PKR 2,520 billion ($10bn).

Current Market Dynamics
Most suppliers are small with 5 to 10 employees and producing around 3,000 to 5,000 motors per year. Of the 400 suppliers, approximately 20-25 may be considered “medium” in size employing 20-30 employees. This group of medium sized suppliers are relatively sophisticated producers, often using higher quality materials. The group have the potential, and apparent enthusiasm, to improve quality further, and want to be able to produce motors of international quality. However, at present, their ability to produce better quality products is limited by:
⦁ Lack of good quality and affordable testing facilities that will allow them to effectively evaluate their current production and identify areas for improvement.
⦁ Design skills that can optimize, for example, motor aerodynamics and winding geometry.
Industrial Accelerator Program Objectives
This program will focus on providing technical support to 4 motor manufacturers. Areas of assistance will be tailored to individual manufacturer needs as well as cover improvement in general areas for the benefit of all participants. These activities will include support with design & manufacturing techniques, factory layouts, materials & procurement, in-house lab improvement guidance and awareness on other best practices. A trickledown effect is envisaged at the end of the program and a couple of large association wide meetings are also planned in order to reach out to a large proportion of the local industry.
IAP objectives are to:
⦁ Improve the efficiency of participants’ products so that a number of their products can qualify for the standard efficiency [IE1] level and potentially speed up the move to higher star levels on NEECA label when NEECA is able to roll out their S&L program.
⦁ Support the capacity of suppliers to create compliant products for domestic sale and facilitation of export

Fig: Stator from local manufacturere; Poorly stacked with Air gaps between the sheet and welded to join them.

Key Observations and lessons from 1st quarter 2023

The CLASP Pakistan team commenced work on the motors accelerator program on 1st January 2023. Detailed meetings were held with participants at the SAMA^Verte office as well as participants’ offices and factories. We also met other stakeholders and suppliers to the industry. The following key information or updates are pertinent to mention here:
  • Participants did not have an accurate understanding of where their products stand in terms of efficiency. Partially they were misled by inaccurate results from local test labs.
  • Some participants originally considered their products to be close to the standard efficiency level. However, a closer look into their products, and tests we conducted followed by analytical sessions with test labs; revealed that the gap in efficiency is much larger than originally envisaged.
  • Manufactures produce motors without any casing standard size, but recently few manufactures has started to follow IEC frame size.
  • In order to improve efficiency few manufactures have started to produce casing with Aluminum.

Multi Alloy Private Ltd: Multi Alloy is Pakistan’s first commercially high-tech stamping facility based in Gujranwala. They were established in 2016 with the purpose of providing international standard rotor/stator for fans in Pakistan with fully automatic stamping machines. They are manufacturing AC Rotor Stator for ceiling fans, Pedestal Fans and BLDC Stators for Ceiling fan in Pakistan.

  • They are doing research and development for some motor manufacturers and have the capacity to cater to the motor industry with some capital investment in die for the rotor/stator of motors. Their appearance on the scene is a positive development as they are a large B2B supplier who have the potential to influence the motors market in a positive way. CLASP Pakistan team would like to involve Multi Alloy Pvt Ltd in the accelerator program under the ‘demonstration project’ which is a sub program under the accelerator.
  • NEECA readiness / Roll out of MEPS: In January 2023, Pakistan government approved the enforcement of Energy Conservation Plan with immediate effect. NEECA is planning to roll out MEPS for the following five appliances including motors within the next 3 months. To survive and be able to sell motors in Pakistan market, motor manufacturer has to improve their efficiency at any cost. The industrial accelerator program will go in a long way to help local manufacturer to comply with the MEPS.
  1. Savings Envisaged through the Accelerator Program

Currently the local manufacture produces around 1.4 million single phase motors and 80,000 three phase motors. The annual energy consumption of locally produced motors stock is around 33 TWh and will rise up to 44TWh.

The accelerator program has been introduced to the industry as a pilot program involving four motor manufacturers and will run for one year. Off the ~ 400 motors and pumps manufacturers; most are quite small. As such the market share of the four participating manufacturers amounts to approximately 5%. We will conduct three workshops with bigger group of motor manufactures to share the findings of Industrial accelerator program envisaging the impact on 15% of the market.

Given the current uncertainty over current efficiency levels, and what ultimately may be achievable through the focused product improvement, savings estimates are uncertain. But best projections of savings to 2030 are in the range of 2,600 – 8,000GWh, equating to 1.03-3.1Mt CO2. However, these savings are purely based on the likely impact of the Accelerator Interventions themselves, and exclude the likely impetus given to the introduction of motor MEPS which will result in magnitudes greater savings.

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