For decades, energy costs were a reliable and predictable factor in production. With costs of around 5 cents/kWh, which are quite competitive across Europe, it was easy to calculate. There are many reasons why this calculation no longer works, the most important of which are the war in Ukraine and the energy transition triggered by climate change. In any case, companies now have to reckon with costs of around 25 cents/kWh, meaning that energy costs have a much greater impact on production costs and energy-intensive companies in particular are facing major challenges. In addition, there is currently no improvement in sight. On the contrary: CO2 pricing will continue to increase energy costs, and the immense need to renew and expand the power grids will also have to be passed on to electricity costs in the future.
Managing energy – a task for today and tomorrow
What is scarce and expensive and absolutely necessary must be “managed”. That is why energy management is the order of the day. The relevant IT tools are available and are frequently used. Energy metres record consumption, for example electricity, gas, compressed air, etc., which the user can then relate to individual production areas, systems or even production quantities.
Such systems are particularly informative when they are not used as stand-alone tools, but are integrated as deeply as possible into the data world of the company or production. Then – in the best case – the “adjustment screws” for targeted optimisation and also for the clear allocation of energy costs to individual products or production steps are transparent.
Comprehensive database for optimising energy consumption
With the energy monitoring system tec.ems, the IIoT team has developed such a modular solution together with tec.nicum – the recently reorganised service division of the Schmersal Group. It is part of a comprehensive IIoT platform that brings transparency to production and provides the user with a comprehensive database for energy consumption, among other things. As a plug-and-play module within this solution, tec.ems enables energy metres to be set up and assigned easily. A dashboard visualises the consumption of all systems and their development. Various evaluation functions allow detailed reports to be created on energy consumption, also according to individually defined parameters. Limit values can be set, and if these are exceeded, an (alarm) message is issued.
This gives users a solid basis for energy efficiency initiatives. They can test and evaluate the effectiveness of individual measures and prepare the data for CSR reporting, which is already mandatory for larger companies across the EU. This obligation will gradually apply to smaller companies as well.
Energy efficiency as a KPI factor
What distinguishes tec.ems from other energy monitoring systems is its integration into the comprehensive IIoT concept that the Schmersal Group has developed and provides to its customers as a platform. Basically, this IIoT platform was developed for the task of “Safety as a Service” and for IIoT-supported service concepts (condition monitoring and predictive maintenance). But since it collects and evaluates comprehensive (production) data, it is also suitable as a basis for energy management.
Task: Record the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
And because the calculation of the KPI is also part of the IIoT concept developed by Schmersal (just like condition monitoring and predictive maintenance), energy efficiency can be related to KPI-relevant data. Specifically: Because the IIoT platform collects central key performance indicators (KPI) for production, energy-related data can be included in these KPIs. This applies, for example, to the KPI for “Overall Equipment Efficiency” (OEE). It records the productivity and effectiveness of a production plant and thus allows, for example, a comparison of plants in the same or different production facilities of a company and the targeted optimisation of this key figure.
First example of use: production of household appliances
This is precisely the opportunity that the first user of the tec.ems energy monitoring system developed by Schmersal is taking advantage of. The management of the Indian production facility of a global manufacturer of household appliances had set itself the goal of increasing energy efficiency in production. Each year, energy consumption in relation to production volume is to be reduced by two to five per cent, with correspondingly positive effects on the site’s CO2 emissions, which are also precisely recorded.
What was required was a scalable, IT-supported solution that would make the current situation fully transparent, but at the same time also allow the recording of KPIs such as OEE. Thirdly, the database should be used to document progress – including for international ESG reporting.
With this request, the site managers turned to the Schmersal Group’s “IIoT Global Competence Centre”, also based in India. The centre was planning the market launch of the aforementioned energy monitoring system at exactly this time and was thus able to implement a first use case.
Hardware: Fail-safe edge solution
When selecting the hardware components, care was taken to ensure that they could maintain communication with the web server for a defined period of time, even in the event of a power failure. The data from machines and drives recorded by energy metres and other sensors is initially collected at the edge level, i.e. in the immediate vicinity of production, and evaluated there in real time. 4G Modbus IoT gateways are used, among other things.
This means that the user always has access to up-to-date data, which can be used directly to control energy supply and generation (solar systems, generators, etc.). At the same time, comprehensive reports are created that document, among other things, progress in reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
The advantages of digitisation: merging energy and production data
The household appliance manufacturer is completely satisfied with this solution: The personnel effort required to record and evaluate energy consumption has been reduced and the OEE indicator has been significantly improved. Operational safety has also been optimised because critical energy consumers and producers are monitored very closely. The same applies to the energy distribution systems. Irregularities are mostly detected in real time and immediately reported to those responsible, for example by SMS.
The transparency goes so far that the energy consumption is recorded for each product produced – individually, for each individual household appliance that leaves the production facility. To ensure this, the energy-related data must be related to the production data of the digital factory. The IIoT platform provided by Schmersal makes a significant contribution to this.
Energy monitoring and “Safety as a Service”
The Schmersal Group has reorganised its service, consulting and engineering offerings and bundled them in an independent company: tec.nicum – Solution & Services GmbH. It is active worldwide and currently employs 162 people, mainly technicians and certified functional safety engineers. More important than the new structure is the expanded range of services, including in the areas of digitisation and software. Here, tec.nicum offers new solutions, for example a tool for carrying out risk assessments, but also new digital services such as cloud solutions, IIoT applications and instruments for energy monitoring.
The “backbones” of such services include a stable IIoT platform that ensures reliable communication between all participants involved – from sensors and visualisation systems to gateways and servers and even the cloud. This platform, developed by Schmersal’s IIoT team, has proven itself not only in the IIoT-supported energy monitoring system presented here, but also in other applications. And the Schmersal experts are already working on the next step: in the future, safety-related data will also be collected, transmitted and evaluated via such a platform. This creates the prerequisite for new, comprehensive services – and for a new business model: “Safety as a Service”.
