With energy-aware industrial devices coming into the marketplace, manufacturers and OEMs will have an important tool to help reduce energy costs as much as 20-30 percent using intelligent, Ethernet-based networking.
Using open-interface standards such as PROFIenergy, Sercos Energy, and the CIP Energy Object, these new energy-saving strategies could become part of a new normal for manufacturers and machinery builders implementing automation application solutions.
The initial target applications are monitoring and saving energy by placing systems into standby mode during production pauses. And even though the base technology has been ready for a couple of years, application deployment has taken time. But now, with the first wave of open-interface, energy-aware devices coming to market, the pace is increasing as companies explore how to integrate energy priorities into the real-time control loops of automation machinery.
New Sirius M200D motor starters from Siemens are an example of how PROFIenergy is being used to disconnect loads selectively and reduce energy costs during breaks without manual switching. (Source: Siemens)
Saving 20-30 percent of energy just by entering standby mode during production pauses offers the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in large automotive plants. In some parts of the world, companies are penalized for having a large carbon footprint, so implementing energy protocols becomes a huge deal if carbon credits are a factor for manufacturers.
Scott Hibbard, vice president of factory automation technology at Bosch Rexroth, told me it had already been putting energy functions into products even before the release of Sercos Energy. But now the process has turned to converting to the open-interface standard for drives, CNCs, and motion controls.
The standardized version for controllers is expected to be in prototype units early this year for customers to try out on their machines. The new controls will use the Sercos Energy information in conjunction with function blocks in PLC programs as part of Rexroth's 4EE energy efficiency program for manufacturing equipment.
Using an IEC-61131 energy efficiency function block to pull in data from Sercos Energy-capable devices, information is presented to the programmer, who can create functions that monitor energy use and/or tune down devices. By performing calculations, the programmer can determine whether to idle a piece of equipment for a specific period to save energy.
With devices able to provide a profile of their energy usage and using networks to collect usage in a granular way, this technology has the potential to really help limit energy usage. Another longer term goal is to add the energy used to create a product to its bill of materials.
Thanks for covering this. There is definitely a lot of work being done in this space. Check out a related story I did on a company trying to save even more power by taking power management out of the microcontroller: http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=257631
It's definitely related to these types of devices and could become an important factor to developing them.
We re-opened our newly-renovated Science and Technology building in the Fall of 2009 and started to bring hordes of guests through on campus tours. One such group was a class of visiting 6th graders that marveled at all of the lighting controls in the rooms, and in the bathrooms, all of the automatic lights, automatic flushes, automatic faucets, and automatic towel dispensers. And then one enterprising 6th grader asked the $10,000 question - "If this building was designed to save energy, why does it use power to turn everything on for you?" After a momentary pause, I replied, "The saving of energy does not come from automatically turning everything on. It comes from automatically turning everything off."
Thankfully he accepted that answer and we could continue the tour...
I agree, tekochip. It's amazing to walk the floor of a big production plant and see how much energy gets wasted by idle machinery. Sometimes, there's a cost-benefit analysis that needs to be made in such situations, but I can't imagine how the downside of this could possibly exceed the upside.
I agree that it is surprising that we aren't shaving energy consumption through use of smart controls. Until recently, it just wasn't a priority. And now, we need to see how many resources will be devoted to saving on energy usage in plants. Even at home, I look at the thermostat and know much more could be done to reduce costs. Still haven't researched and implemented a much better solution there ... and it's my money.
I never designed an Industrial device, but it's shameful how much power we used to throw away in the Appliance world. The DOE had all sorts of regulations on presenting the proper default wash temperature, but then we would throw away a Watt or more in the power supply so we wouldn't have to buy a transformer. That's a Watt sitting at idle. What's funny is that when the unit was running we had to save power everywhere else, operating the control like a spacecraft because we didn't have enough power for everything on the control, yet we were throwing gobs of power away in heat all for the glory of a low Bill Of Material. Some people sneered when the DOE starting putting regulations on idle power, but people in the industry knew that we had been very, very wasteful and would have continued the practice had we not been forced to change.
So now an engineer has to be a fortune teller (or prophet) to see into the future how long a device is 'idle'. And yet, my engineering pay seems to have stagnated over the last two years!
I do see this technology as needed in applications of motion control, pumps, and other relatively quick start-up equipment. But long response items like ovens or tanks do not like to be shutdown for periods of time. Although, I have used temperature setback features for known intervals (like scheduled maintenance or weekend shutdowns).
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
The push to achieving more intelligent, integrated manufacturing is putting a strong focus on networking and connectivity as key enabling technologies.
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