As one of the largest sawmills in Europe, Ziegler Holzindustrie KG used to consume up to around 27 gigawatts of power a year. To identify potential for energy savings, the company opted to use the solutions offered by its long-term partner Siemens. The result: a three percent reduction in power consumption in just the first year. 27 gigawatts is around the amount of electrical energy needed to power a town with 9,000 inhabitants including commercial enterprises. This statistic prompted the Managing Directors of Ziegler Holzindustrie KG to take a hard look at the overall energy consumption of the sawmill. This was done using an energy monitoring system supplied by Siemens which used around 40 measuring devices to record the energy flows across all the production areas and plants. The aim was to achieve a sustainable reduction in the mill's power consumption.
Sophisticated measurement systems and precise software
The PC-based power monitoring software "powermanager" is based on the SCADA system SIMATIC WinCC Open Architecture. Used in combination with the measuring devices, it provides the ideal solution for power monitoring. 7KM PAC series measuring devices now supply data from all the production areas of the mill using Ethernet connections. This entails the recording, analysis, evaluation and archiving of practically every key energy indicator using the energy monitoring software "powermanager". This allows the power consumption data to be allocated to the individual cost centers, and optimization and savings potential to be identified in the power distribution. The level of transparency achieved has enabled Ziegler to reduce its power consumption in only the first year by around three percent. This move has also resulted in an improvement of the power supply quality, and therefore significantly reduced downtimes. The investment outlay for the system was recouped within only a short time.
