CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY: ELIMINATE WASTED HOURS THROUGH A HEAT TRACE ASSESSMENT

When it comes to heat trace assessments, EHT Group stands above the rest, helping facilities eliminate pipe bursts, reduce unnecessary costs and eliminate wasted hours on initial and annual tickets that take teams away from additional responsibilities.

Find out how we do it, through our latest customer success story. 

When our team of experts carry out a facility heat trace assessment, we use our years of expertise to ensure that your facility’s process applications are protected from freeze-ups and bursts. Taking a closer look at an oil and gas facility in Alberta, Canada, we completed a heat trace assessment in 2018, and the results we were able to deliver were incredible from not only a cost savings standpoint, but also, from a manual output.

Here is what we found  

Prior to EHT Group’s Heat Trace Assessment:  

• A Contractor was managing the electrical heat trace maintenance on a full-time basis, and the facility was still experiencing freezing issues and  an unmanageable maintenance schedule.  
• This Facility was experiencing many issues caused by electric heat trace, and had experienced at least 5 process upsets related to freezing issues caused by electrical heat tracing. 
• Critical alarms were not actioned, resulting in 27 noted failures prior to our heat trace assessment  
• In addition to the process issues that were identified in our heat trace assessment, our team also uncovered a large number of scheduled wasted maintenance hours completing field assessments and preventative maintenance activities that didn’t need to be completed or were duplicated. Not only was the team wasting hours on these preventative issues, so much of the facilities power was being wasted including  
• Forced on EHT – related to unmanaged processes – 100  
• Estimated power wanted 789,251KW  

And finally, we discovered that the Facility was spending a lot of money to correct these issues, in an estimated cost of over $646,200 with power cost, EHT monitoring costs and maintenance costs combined.  

So how did we fix it?  

Results of EHT Group’s Heat Trace Assessment:  

After our heat trace assessment, we were able to  

• Eliminate issues caused by EHT  
• Reduce the number of pipe bursts from 5 to 0 on a reoccurring annual basis 
• Reduce the number of critical alarms not actioned from 27 to 0 

In addition to eliminating and reducing process issues, we had great success in improving the efficiency of the team by 

• Reducing the number of initial and annual work tickets  
• Reducing the number of in field walk downs and reduction of hours networking controllers  

And finally, we were able to save the facility energy and money by 

• Cutting down the number of forced on EHT from 100 to 12 circuits during the winter months 
• Reducing their estimated power wasted by 694,541KW and saving them over $15,700 in power cost savings 

The biggest win was reducing their EHT monitoring budget and maintenance cost through the introduction of SmartTrace Monitoring SmartTrace Management.  Now, the facility manages EHT maintenance remotely using SmartTrace, while also providing onsite support when required, which has saved them time and money on all fronts- management, maintenance and on hours worked.  

Thanks to our heat trace assessment, our client was able to ensure that their facility is running efficiently, safely without risk of pipe bursts and freeze ups, while also eliminating wasted hours and ensuring that your teams have the visibility of the health of your heat tracing infrastructure. To find out more about our heat trace assessments, or SmartTrace Monitoring, please connect with us.