Western Metal Industries' Bhandgaon facility is one of India's largest producers of aluminium slugs. We delivered a four-source microgrid that coordinates solar, storage, grid, and DG — and built around it the proof that storage-first manufacturing works in Indian conditions.
WMI's Bhandgaon plant already operated a 500 kW rooftop solar PV system. Daytime generation regularly exceeded plant load, with surplus being exported to the grid at modest feed-in tariffs. The moment shifts ran into the evening — or the morning startup load kicked in before sunrise — the facility was back to drawing high-cost grid power.
On top of that, the plant ran a DG set for grid-outage backup. Diesel was expensive. DG run-hours were rising. And like every HT industrial unit in Maharashtra, demand charges and time-of-day penalties were quietly compounding on every monthly bill.
The brief to Harmonizer Energy was specific: make the solar plant useful around the clock, take diesel out of the equation as much as possible, and demonstrate that an Indian aluminium plant can credibly target Net Zero.
We designed and commissioned a battery-first microgrid that integrates four energy sources under a single AI-driven Energy Management System. The EMS doesn't just monitor — it decides, every minute, where the plant's power should come from.
The EMS runs a strict priority stack: solar PV feeds the load first, BESS arbitrage second, grid power third, DG only as the last resort. Day-ahead forecasting predicts load and solar generation; intra-day optimisation adjusts dispatch every fifteen minutes against the live tariff schedule.
Excess solar that used to be exported at low rates is now stored in the BESS and deployed during evening shifts. Peak-tariff windows are met from the battery, not the grid. The DG set, which used to run for grid-outage backup, now sits idle most months — and when it does run, it's typically just to top up the battery during a long outage rather than to feed the production line directly.
Performance against the baseline is measured monthly and reported quarterly. The system has been operating in production since 2025.
Integrated with the existing 500 kW solar array and grid connection. Designed for multi-cycle daily operation.
The plant no longer experiences perceptible interruption during grid faults. Critical loads ride through seamlessly.
DG operation has dropped sharply. Lower fuel bills, lower maintenance, and a meaningful step toward the plant's Net Zero roadmap.
Beyond the headline metrics, the project has changed how the management team thinks about energy. Power is no longer a fixed operating cost line item — it is a variable that the EMS actively manages, the same way a treasury manages cash flow. That shift in mindset is, arguably, the most durable outcome.
If your monthly electricity bill is above ₹10 lakh, you have existing solar, or you run multiple shifts — share a few details and we'll model your specific savings.
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