The energy crisis is making things difficult in industry. Rising prices are turning energy into a busi- ness-critical parameter. The result is that manufacturing companies are under more pressure than ever to deal with the availability of a scarce resource and put in place smart energy management. As factories continue to work on boosting overall equipment effectiveness and flexibility, one question keeps cropping up – how much energy does all this need? “Before you can evaluate, manage and optimise something, you need to be able to measure it and understand it in its context,” points out Dieter Meuser, CEO Digital Industrial Solutions at German Edge Cloud. That is why, at the Rittal plant in Haiger, the software experts of the Friedhelm Loh Group are incorporating the monitoring of energy flows into the IT-supported 360-degree overview of all process.

So how exactly does this energy monitoring work? Production machinery and plants are fitted with energy meters that automatically transmit measured values to the ONCITE Digital Production System (DPS). The DPS is a platform for the agile management of manufacturing processes. While the manufacturing process is underway, the system compares master data to dynamic data from production and makes it available in a cycle comprising analytics, alerts and live dashboarding.

FROM ENERGY MONITORING TO ENERGY MANAGEMENT

“It is logical that production and plant directors can only get the insight they need if the energy data recorded is reconciled with the specific production processes and relevant product,” explains the CEO, adding: “Theoretically, figures can be calculated right down to a product carbon footprint (PCF). It is a pretty safe assumption that the PCF will become a market-relevant factor in good time.” Right now, however, it is energy efficiency that really matters: “If we can identify which job – with which unit numbers and product – recorded what kind of energy consumption on which system and when, then Rittal can move from monitoring energy to managing it, so production can be made more energy efficient.”

MOVING PRODUCTION TO MORE COST-EFFECTIVE HOURS

The actual objective is to optimise energy supplies. A transparent overview of data relating to energy flows and their contextualisation create the basis for optimisation. Improvements can include professional load management for controlling power consumption, the prevention of load peaks and the detailed coordination of power availability and consumption, whether in terms of in-house electricity generation or external energy supplies. The keyword is “detailed”: “Ultimately, smart energy management should also enable plant managers to move energy-intensive production processes to times when energy is cheap,” states Dieter Meuer, adding: “You can already make those kinds of decisions really accurately using the data that is available now.”