Plants trade compressor hardware for 100% reliable air supply.
Air for Sale
Compressed air is industry’s fourth utility. Along with electricity, water and natural gas, compressed air is a resource that powers everything from handheld pneumatic tools to plantwide manufacturing systems. Most plants produce their own compressed air. Many, however, are treating compressed air like they would any other utility. They purchase compressed air, not compressed air equipment.
In simple terms, a third-party supplier produces compressed air on a user’s site and the user agrees to purchase the quantity and quality of compressed air required. A pioneer and one of the largest suppliers of air compressors in the United States is DirectAIR®, a division of Air Technologies (www.DirectAIR .com).
“In 1993, Air Technologies sold 20 compressors to a major gas utility company for filling their CNG vehicles, and we were responsible for maintaining the compressors,” explains Steve Schoeny, corporate utility services manager for Air Technologies. “They had PLCs that sent an alarm to a technician’s pager if a problem was brewing. When there was an alarm, a technician drove to the site, which could be hours away, to address the issue. Too often he’d drive all the way just to hit a reset button.”
“We have some very smart folks in-house who knew our machinery and could write software code,” Schoeny adds. “They designed and produced a control system to run compressors unattended 24/7 and to monitor them remotely. Just like that, we had something special.”
Air Technologies was already applying this remote capability for the utility company when it got a call from another business in Ohio. “A steel mill was shutting down one of its power houses,” Schoeny says. “They asked if we could supply them with compressed air – not air compressors, just compressed air.”
Building on the success of the steel mill installation, Schoeny’s team developed the concept into a separate business that evolved into DirectAIR®. It now operates 27 air-as-a-utility sites in the United States, mainly in the Midwest and Northeast.
