THE FUTURE IS BECOMING MORE PREDICTABLE
Project location
Schwertberg, Austria
Year of implementation
2022
Application
Energy analysis, load monitoring
Hardware
UMG 512-PRO, UMG 96-PA, UMG 103-CBM
Software
GridVis®
Service
Consulting, planning assistance
REQUIREMENT
Pool specialist Steinbach, with its well-known Intex brand, attaches great importance not only to quality but also to delivery capability, especially for water treatment products. That is why these are produced at the company‘s headquarters in Schwertberg (Upper Austria). In addition to the care products, the associated containers are also injection molded, assembled, and shipped using state-of-the-art logistics. Economically, this is only possible with automated production and maximum energy efficiency. All consumption in production, logistics, and administration is precisely recorded by energy monitoring.
SOLUTION
The processes involved in automation and building technology do not run perfectly at the touch of a button. Rather, they open up scope for improvement that needs to be exploited. To do this, it is necessary to be able to quantify savings and losses precisely. For this reason, an energy monitoring system based on GridVis® visualization software and Janitza measuring devices was set up at the company‘s site. Around 60 hardware devices and 8 virtual devices are managed with the software and record the power consumption of the individual billing areas. Steinbach also uses the measurements to evaluate the effectiveness of efficiency measures and make adjustments where necessary. Historical data can also be used to identify and mitigate the causes of peak loads. Another advantage is voltage quality monitoring. A high-quality UMG 512-PRO power quality analyzer is installed at the feed-in point for this purpose. This device can also document power failures in the millisecond range. In the medium term, thanks to the open interfaces, not only currents but also compressed air consumption, for example, will be recorded.
BENEFIT
Steinbach aims to bring production back to the region. This requires precise planning. For example, it may make economic sense not to design a plant for extreme outdoor temperatures. This means that production has to be suspended on a few days of the year, but it saves tens of thousands in the design of aggregates and pipelines and requires less power to be kept in reserve. Measurement technology provides reliable figures for such projects. A continuously manned control room is also in the planning stage, in which GridVis® will play an important role. The idea is that the cause of a malfunction at a specific location may lie in a completely different area. This can be tracked precisely with monitoring.
