The targets are clear: CO2 emissions must be reduced by 65% by 2030, depending on the sector. The Federal Climate Protection Act sets the target of 'climate neutrality' by 2045. This primarily affects companies in energy-intensive sectors such as manufacturers of steel, metal, glass, paper and cement.

In all these sectors, the optimization of process heat was not an issue for a long time. Management and controlling focused on process costs rather than total costs. In fact, the energy factor had no significant impact on unit costs until before the war in Ukraine. This is now different: the explosion in energy costs has led to a 'turnaround' - the energy factor is now of central importance and plays a key role in determining the direction of a product. At present, it is primarily a question of maintaining the economic viability of a product - and more broadly, of securing the existence of a company and, in Germany in particular, maintaining the production location.

Power controllers, for example, can make a significant contribution to the energy transition. They support the transformation from fossil fuels to electrical energy and enable power (or current or voltage) to be set variably from 0 to 100 %. Typically, these are thyristor power controllers that work like a kind of dimmer. Devices from Jumo, for example, are equipped with LC displays as standard for parameterization on the device. As these thyristor power controllers are supplied via the USB interface, they do not require an external power supply.

Load management prevents current peaks

Many industrial companies are currently reducing their peak values in order to reduce power charges. Instead of a large electric heating system, they divide the required heating output into small heating groups and switch them on as required. Efficient load management prevents unnecessary power peaks in the heating system.

A production plant consists of a large number of consumers (including drives, heating and hydraulics). Process-dependent energy management is necessary within a plant. All energy flows within a plant must be recorded for this purpose. These can be clearly displayed with the help of a Sankey diagram. The energy profile can be used to optimize the process. This requires precise knowledge of the process technology and a pool of historical process data, which can be analyzed to draw conclusions about the system status.

Load management at Jumo, also known as dual energy management, divides the consumers into two groups. A time delay prevents the loads from being switched on at the same time if the actuating values are less than 100 %. This prevents current peaks. This setting can be implemented without a great deal of parameterization effort. The actuators are synchronized via the mains frequency.

Energy monitoring - the be-all and end-all

Production facilities such as smelting plants - whether for aluminum or iron - require efficient energy monitoring. The aim here is to avoid power peaks with regard to the energy consumption of the machines and systems. The aim is to localize the largest energy consumers in a company and initiate suitable measures.

The author: Michael Klose is press spokesman at Jumo in Fulda.

© Jumo

However, this requires considerable preparatory work on the part of the companies: They must check and optimize their processes and identify and document the energy flows in the respective manufacturing processes. The second step is to analyze the energy data. The greatest challenge lies in this precise and in-depth analysis. This is followed by implementation, whereby the optimization options are incorporated into the production process and then consistently implemented in the respective organization.