SEL and Sustainability
SEL Products
The foundation of our company comes from our constant goal to make our products so reliable they last 20-30 years. A focus on long-lasting, quality products is a solid starting point for our sustainability efforts.
“We want to see what the future looks like and use our great products to build that future.”
Aggregating renewable energy sources in a microgrid helps mitigate inconsistent power by combining multiple sources into one generation output that is less variable than any single renewable source.
Microgrids
SEL microgrid solutions help improve the reliability of power from renewable resources.
Wind Power
SEL helped Belgian grid operator Elia to implement a special protection scheme, allowing them to integrate offshore wind power into the European grid, generating power for the mainland and beyond.
SEL Engineering Services partnered with a building solutions company to devise a way to store energy from solar panels for use by customers when the need is highest, improving the reliability of the bulk electric. This was done through the installation of a Real-Time Automation Controller (RTAC), meter, and SEL-3622 Security Gateway for communication to the dispatcher’s systems for each site.
Solar Power
Storing solar energy to improve the reliability of bulk electricity.
Manufacturing
Our focus on quality helps lead us down a path of sustainability. Designing products that are manufactured to be in service for 20–30 years, and a constant focus on quality, means reducing defects, and eventually that starts to reduce waste overall.
“Better solutions are often more sustainable.”
Vertical Integration
With much of our supply chain incorporated into the company, we shorten lead times, keep our supply chain up to our standards, and save costs for our customers, but it also means we use less packaging and require less shipping.
Our engineers and employee owners work to simplify the manufacturing process through world-class manufacturing principles, contributing to sustainability and reducing our environmental impact. Some examples include using the same pallets from our suppliers to ship our final products to customers and going straight from the dock to the manufacturing floor, reducing storage and forklift use.
Simplified Processes
We are consistently researching and implementing small changes that can make a big impact.
Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Factory
Thanks to a unique water recycling method, our PCB factory at the SEL Schwartz Campus in Moscow, Idaho, is one of the most environmentally friendly PCB factories in the world.
Packaging and Shipping
We are proud to employ engineers whose sole job is to keep our packaging and shipping as lean as possible while still delivering quality products safely. In the spirit of creativity, these engineers streamline and combine in order to eliminate waste.
“A lot of sustainable practices are also good business practices. They are the right thing to do.”
Reusing Packaging Between Facilities
Vertical integration means sometimes we are just shipping very short distances between our own campuses. In some of these cases, we are reusing our packaging material. With some of our products, we were able to eliminate boxes altogether, stacking them on pallets using just corner packaging.
“We take partnership really seriously, and we work really hard at it.”
Partnership
We partnered with our cabinet supplier to reduce waste. Instead of receiving their cabinets in one set of boxes and then using new boxes to ship out our finished products, they buy the boxes we will eventually use directly from our supplier. When their cabinets reach us, we buy those boxes from them and use them to ship our final product, cutting packaging in half.
Milk Run
Instead of several trucks a day coming from neighboring towns with shipments, and several SEL trucks also delivering things to those towns, we developed what we call a “milk run.”
One of our trucks filled with deliveries drives from Pullman to Spokane, makes deliveries and fills up that space in the truck with things that would have been delivered to us, then heads to Lewiston to do the same and back to Pullman—one filled truck on the road rather than several partially filled trucks.
In 2021, we piloted a program with this supplier partner in which these 40-pound batteries will be shipped on pallets without boxes. Engineering a solution to ensure the batteries arrive safely without the usual boxes took collaboration, and some trial and error, but we are on track to save over 8,000 boxes a year.
Supplier Partners
Our battery supplier has been shipping batteries to us in individual boxes.
Packaging Partners
We use a packaging supplier in Seattle and Oregon for our Pullman and Lewiston campuses, but when we opened our Purdue facility, we realized we didn’t want this packaging material shipped that far. Through our partnership with our Seattle supplier, we found a solution. They shared the packaging and shipping plan and design with a supplier close to the Purdue facility. So, we still have the same packaging designs that work best with our products but local to our Purdue campus, which means much less shipping.
On Campus
We know that daily practices can add up to big change. We strive to break down environmental initiatives into projects we can incorporate into everyday practices on our SEL campuses.
“I found we were doing well; we met the standard, but we could do even better.”
Reducing Consumption to Serve the Community
During a heat wave, a local utility asked consumers to use less power. We didn’t know the impact small adjustments on our campuses could make, until SEL meters proved it!
Recycling
All our cardboard and film solutions are curbside recyclable, but we go beyond what’s required and pay to recycle things we aren’t required to, like batteries.
Heating and Cooling
We have installed computerized thermostats in our airport hangars rather than manually adjusting them, which often means overcorrecting. We are also replacing all rooftop air conditioning units with more efficient ones.
Lighting
We have replaced several thousand regular fluorescent lightbulbs with LED bulbs on the manufacturing floor and office spaces of our manufacturing building. This alone will save 437,461 kWh per year. We are expanding this project to our other buildings.
Landscaping and Watering
We are currently incorporating more dry land, removing landscaping, taking out turf grass, and using soil moisture sensors on our campuses. So far, we have reduced our water use on our Lewiston campus by half.