Building and load management: The future is automated

When a power supply is largely based on renewable energy sources, sectors have to be coupled. This includes power generation, industry, mobility, infrastructure, and buildings. Phoenix Contact shows a technical perspective of the All Electric Society – and an example of cross-sector automation in buildings.

Solar energy exceeds current global energy demands and is practically inexhaustible. In addition, the technical foundations are already in place to cover this demand with electricity that is generated in a climate-neutral, renewable, and environmentally friendly way based on solar energy. It is possible to envision a future world where electricity for all areas of life is generated exclusively in a carbon-neutral way from renewable sources of energy.

However, an “All Electric Society” does not mean that other energy sources will no longer have a role to play. That is because electricity generated by the sun or wind is not available everywhere to an equal extent and on a continuous basis, plus the harnessed energy is difficult to store. Additionally, electricity is not a suitable energy source for certain applications, such as transport by air and sea or the heating of buildings.

In order to provide practical solutions here, the idea of the All Electric Society relies on a paradigm shift. For decades electricity has mainly been generated from primary energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas — but in the future, electricity will itself become a sustainably generated form of primary energy, which can then be converted into other likewise carbon-neutral liquid or gas energy sources as required.

The paradigm shift that needs to take place is based on Power-to-X technologies, which can solve issues concerning the availability, storage, and recovery of electrical energy. Through conversion processes, Power-to-X takes energy that was originally produced as electricity and makes it available in the form of hydrogen, methane, or methanol, for example. Electricity can thus be used to produce climate-neutral fuels for cars, ships, or aircraft. So-called e-fuels enable further use of the existing infrastructure, they are an effective way of storing and transporting energy, and can even be converted back into electricity using combined heat and power plants.

Energy efficiency for the interim period

However, one problem is the low efficiency of the energy conversion process used for Power-to-X technologies. It is only by significantly reducing the costs associated with the generation of renewable energy that e-fuels can be produced economically. The vast global expansion of the distributed generation of renewable energy will help in the long term. However, for the current interim period, it is absolutely critical that energy efficiency is increased. Sector coupling offers a technical solution that is also economically viable. This involves the comprehensive smart networking of the following sectors: energy, industry, mobility, infrastructure, and buildings – in terms of both data and energy flow (Figure 1).

Figure 1:
Comprehensive and smart networking in building and load management has been successfully implemented at Phoenix Contact’ֹs Bad Pyrmont site

The aim is to create an efficient and balanced overall system in which surplus energy can always flow exactly where it is needed. It is based on maximum electrification as well as the subsequent digitalization, networking, and automation of all sectors. In the coming years, the economic implementation of sector coupling will require convergence in electrical engineering and information technology across traditional domains such as building automation, transportation technology, and factory and process automation. The basic technologies needed to achieve this already exist: from 5G and TSN to Single Pair Ethernet – a seamless communication infrastructure can be realized between the numerous devices that are installed anywhere from the sensor/actuator level to the IT system. Building on this, transmission standards such as OPC UA and open control platforms like PLCnext Technology from Phoenix Contact will expedite forthcoming projects and applications (Figure 2).

Figure 2:
The basic technologies in communication are the foundation for the successful economic implementation of sector coupling

Analyzing existing general conditions

One example of building and load management is Phoenix Contact’s Bad Pyrmont site, which has grown considerably in the past 25 years. The networks for the four production and office buildings are interconnected, which means that electricity, heating, cooling, compressed air, and nitrogen can be distributed. Two in-house natural-gas-powered combined heat and power plants, plus a photovoltaic system produce electricity and heat. If required, additional electricity is fed in from the grid, however, the quantity is purposefully limited.

What makes sense ecologically and also economically presents a technical challenge, as energy supply and demand must be constantly balanced.

There are three typical scenarios:

1. Not enough of our own electricity is generated: The local power provider supplies additional power, but in addition to billing the absolute electricity consumption they also apply a through-transmission charge that includes load values. If the site exceeds a defined load value in a 15-minute interval, extra costs will be applied for this.
2. More electricity is produced than is currently consumed: The combined heat and power plants are shut down as soon as the photovoltaic system is generating enough electricity.
   There is an energy storage facility at Building 4 that collects excess energy. However, in a smart building, ventilation systems can also cool the building using cheap electricity at the weekend if the building determines that it will be warm the next day.
3. The wide spectrum of temperatures: The climatic conditions for the production of electronic modules must always be stable, even with the hot outside temperatures of summer. This is when cooling units and dehumidifiers are used – requiring a correspondingly high amount of electricity. If too much process cooling is available, this can be fed into a thermal energy storage system. In this case, a fire-protection appliance that stores over 400 cubic meters of water. 
   
   So how do you achieve optimum load management? Previously, staff shut down or added systems manually based on past experience. These decisions were ultimately down to the know-how of the individual in question. That made for different, personal choices. However, the more complex the overall system, the more error-prone daily routines became and the more expensive it was when decisions were made too late or the wrong decisions were made.

…And digitizing energy management

It was therefore obvious that manual energy management needed to be digitalized and automated, e.g., to ensure that the load limit value does not exceed the 15-minute interval and production runs reliably.

Step 1: The Facility Management team at Phoenix Contact networked the buildings, the production plants, and the energy suppliers at the data level. The cables converge in Building 4. It was here in 2016 that the company’s own Emalytics software system for building management was used for the first time, and then later adopted in all “old” buildings. The IoT-based building management system combines integration, engineering, visualization, reporting, and analysis. This not only required the integration of around 25,000 individual data points from over 50 controllers, but the team also had to recreate, link, and test the corresponding plant images for monitoring and operating the technical trades. In addition to pure data transfer, more than 7,000 data records (histories) and around 130 automatic time schedule programs were also transferred. Emalytics is therefore comprised of more than 61,000 data points at the Bad Pyrmont site.

Step 2: Staff documented their know-how: first, they categorized all the electricity consumers according to their priority. Manufacturing plants that must run are assigned to priority 1. Loads that are allowed to go off-grid for a short time are assigned to priority 2. Loads that can also be absent for a longer period of time are assigned to priority 3. Staff then defined how much electrical power would be saved on shutdown for each load. Based on the findings, the team developed a tiered system for the automated switch-on and shutdown of plants. Startup for operation is also performed in a specific sequence. Not a completely risk-free undertaking: with such a high number of interventions in a complex system, unforeseen disruptions can occur. But this has been far outweighed by the success achieved, as no production plants have suffered any failures since the existing building services management system was converted to Emalytics at the end of 2020/start of 2021. Independent third parties have also confirmed that the buildings in Bad Pyrmont are around 50 percent cheaper to run than the market average (Figure 3).

Figure 3:
Emalytics and the Smart Services of Proficloud.io provide a deep insight and enable targeted building and load management

Step 3: The energy data can be acquired using a higher-level cloud service based on Proficloud.io. Not only can this be used to establish energy and KPI monitoring across locations, data analysis is also possible using AI and machine learning algorithms in order to provide more precise consumption forecasts, for example. The specialists at Phoenix Contact support users who are faced with similar challenges – with the company’s entire portfolio of solutions at their disposal: from components like the ILC 2050 BI controller for data acquisition inside the building and interaction with the building via the intelligent building services management system using Emalytics through to data evaluation across locations with the Smart Services of Proficloud.io (Figure 4).

Figure 4:
Data can be visualized and consumption information shown with Proficloud.io and the Smart Services

Summary

Sector coupling and innovative load management are possible at a local level if standardized software and hardware are used and the know-how of specialist departments is incorporated. Phoenix Contact’s Bad Pyrmont site is proof of this.