As the government nudges institutional canteens to go electric, a factory in Oragadam near Chennai, which has been running a fully electric kitchen set up for two years now is inspiring confidence among Tamil Nadu’s businesses to take the path.
Even as chapatis and dosas disappear from industrial canteens due to fuel rationing, it is business as usual at the cafteria of Danfoss India, a Danish multinational engineering major that has a large presence in the Oragadam industrial corridor.
From dosas, omelletes, chapatis to papads and other deep fried delicacies, the canteen has been serving its employees its regular menu all three times a day.
Less Emissions
Two and a half years ago, as Danfoss was looking to expand its conventional kitchen and mapping carbon emissions, it realised that roughly four hundred square meters additional kitchen space were needed along with more gas. That is when the company decided to evaluate the electric kitchen option and found that it had multiple benefits along with making good economic sense.
Economic gains
businessline took a walk through the electric kitchen of Danfoss, which includes a deep frying pan, a cooking range, a tilting brazing pan, and a Tawa for hot dosas, chapatis and omeletes, among others. Consuming upto 290 KW of electricity in total, the entire system is fully green, supported by renewable energy. The company has also set up a waste-to-energy plant that converts food waste into biogas, which powers the kitchen’s hot water requirements.
Electric kitchen at Danfoss facility at Oragadam near Chennai
| Photo Credit: BIJOY GHOSH
Ravichandran Purushothaman, President of Danfoss India, says that the kitchen involved an upfront investment of around ₹1.7 crore and fairly simple training regime for the staff, but the payback period has been less than 3 years for them. It’s not just to beat the geopolitical risks or to go green, but there’s a logical business case in going electric, he adds.
Ravichandran Purushothaman, President, Danfoss India
| Photo Credit: BIJOY GHOSH
Danfoss estimates their annual cost saving by going electric at about ₹35 lakh. Not just that, it has removed 27 tonnes of LPG annually from operations, and reduced 87 tons per year in carbon emissions. The electric range cooks 40 per cent faster, saving over 12,600+ work hours per year, company estimates show.
During the peak cooking hours, working with the set of key electric appliances, the company is able to serve around 2,000 meals a day and it also has the capacity to go up to 4,000 meals per day.
“If you move to electric and if you have an integrated solar power (like Danfoss does), it pays you back even faster. Second, it is also giving you a 30 percent benefit on the real estate space because you don’t need space to keep cylinders,” Purushothaman said. The government should look at offering some amount of subsidy for industries setting up electric kitchens in their campus, he adds.
Interestingly, as fuel shortage hits corporate canteens, Danfoss’ kitchen is busy welcoming visitors.
“In the last two weeks, we have had about 14 companies [officials] visit to check out our electric kitchen and our supplier too is completely overloaded (with queries),” says Purushothaman. Nobody predicted the war when we decided to go electric then, but we are enjoying the benefits of that decision today, he adds.