Life Cycle Assessment of a Medium Voltage Protection Relay : A case study

Abstract

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in today’s business. Not only is there a pressure from governments and regulators, but also from other stakeholders. For example, customers are becoming increasingly concerned about sustainability when making purchasing decisions, and from ABB’s point of view, both the company and their customers are now becoming more and more interested in Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for their products. As a result, this thesis was commissioned by ABB ELDS.

The main purpose of this thesis is to address ABB ELDS’s need for new LCA’s and EPD’s for their medium voltage protection relays, while also contributing to the literature. The main research question is “what are the potential environmental impacts of a medium voltage protection relay throughout its life cycle?”. The study also aims to determine what are the most impactful life cycle stages and processes as well as to identify potential improvement opportunities.

A case study is conducted for two representative relay configurations of the Relion 615 series by adopting the internationally standardized method called LCA according to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. The main intended application is for an EPD according to ISO 14025, and the adopted product category rules (PCR) is EPDItaly007, which is based on EN 50693. The LCA software used is SimaPro 9.3.0.2 with the database ecoinvent v3.8. The impact assessment is conducted according to the standard EN 15804:2012+A2:2019, as required by EPDItaly007.

The study shows that the most impactful life cycle stage of a relay is the use stage due to its power consumption. The second most impactful life cycle stage is the upstream manufacturing stage, mainly due to the production and use of integrated circuits and printed wiring boards. The use of precious metals and air freight was also found to have a significant impact on the environment. Finally, the study shows that the overall environmental impacts can be largely reduced by using renewable energy in different life cycle stages.

The study is significant from a managerial point of view because the results are used for developing and publishing an EPD, to satisfy the requests of the case company’s customers. Also, because the results are interpreted to establish conclusions and recommendations, it provides value for product development and improvement. Finally, it provides novel contributions to the literature because current LCA studies of these types of products are scarce.

The LCA has been internally reviewed by LCA experts of the case company. However, it has not been verified by an accredited third-party; the thesis was submitted during the same time as the audit process started. Thus, the results are subject to change from the official EPD.