INTERGEN: 100% RELIABILITY AND EFFICIENCY
Cogeneration plant service and maintenance guarantee
maximum energy performance and profit
Intergen, IML Group the energy division of IML Group, has been the exclusive Italian dealer for MWM (Motoren Werke Mannheim) engines for thirty years. The company specialises in designing and building turnkey cogeneration plants with natural gas and biogas fuelled engines.
The company, with headquarters in Lomagna (Lecco) was one of the first in the 1980s to install a cogeneration plant in Italy. Today it is one of the most important players and has built more than 230 plants for a total of 300 installed MWe.
Energy costs have represented one of the major roadblocks to development for medium size Italian companies in recent years. For this reason an increasingly large number of energy intensive SMEs from various industries have decided to changeover to cogeneration for an integrated production of electricity and heat. This solution has the advantage of reducing energy production costs by exploiting the waste heat of the engines that would otherwise go unused.
Intergen is a partner able to perform an accurate analysis of its customers’ energy consumption to design and build custom plants. A top quality system also needs an excellent maintenance service to get the most out of its potential. The aim of IML Group’s business unit is to guarantee the operation of the plant for the maximum number of available hours. Data collected over the past 5 years by the company show that the operating availability of plants under contract exceeds 95% on average, a very high figure, which for customers means a reduction in the investment payback time.
“2016 was a very intensive year for Intergen which had to face a full-fledged stress test” confirmed Gianluca Sciuto, After sales and Service Manager at Intergen. “Approximately 80% of active plants fuelled by biogas had to undergo a major overhaul scheduled for their estimated half life that entails an intervention on most of the engine components. The cogenerator needs to be almost completely disassembled, checked, overhauled and put back into operation. Being able to perform a half life overhaul in just five days instead of the twelve stated by the manual – concluded Gianluca Sciuto – is the proof that Intergen and its people are able to create a perfect machine where each activity is optimised to the maximum”.
A top maintenance service prevents wasting money due to a lack of energy production. A 24 hour downtime of a 1 MWe biogas plant means around 6,000 euro in loss of income. The reliability of the services provided by Intergen is the result of years of process development and engineering. The company’s strong points include: a team of highly qualified professionals, on-call service 365 days a year, customised programs designed based on specific plant needs, immediate availability of spare parts throughout Italy and the possibility of remote control of the plant, which makes it possible to monitor all operating parameters and perform troubleshooting and many corrective operations remotely.
“Our technicians” as Gianluca Sciuto recalls with satisfaction, “attend training programs at MWM, the parent company headquartered in Mannheim, near Frankfurt, allowing our people to remain constantly up-to-date on the new engines manufactured in order to minimise downtime in the event of a fault or simple maintenance”.
Even Stefano Gandini, Senior gas Coordinator, a commissioning technician for twenty years is convinced that the service has reached levels of true excellence.. “Performing maintenance and overhaul work on-site is challenging but the results are worth it” – Gandini stated and continued “The availability of spare parts, widespread network within the country and the professionalism of our personnel, make it possible to quickly solve any anomalies and ensure routine maintenance has a very short time frame. We are all aware – concluded Gandini – that the more efficient our work is, the higher our customer loyalty will be”.
