Denca gets involved in a wide spectrum of work and it is interesting to see how evolving demands faced by businesses develop trends in the projects we undertake across the manufacturing sector.
Although energy efficiency and sustainability have always been important, we have seen a marked growth in customers prioritising this area as legislation and social responsibility work alongside financial and market pressures to encourage businesses to become ever more sustainable and competitive for the future.
The real benefits arising from consuming less energy and reducing your business’ exposure to carbon taxes are today’s core drivers.
Denca’s in-house experience in specifying and delivering Business Energy Management Systems (BEMS) extends across design, software development, instrumentation, control panels and installation as well as all testing and commissioning prior to hand over.
BEMS are designed to help you accurately monitor energy use and so identify opportunities to reduce consumption and, at the same time, enhance the green credentials of your business. Designed, developed and applied correctly they have the ability to drive significant improvements within your plant.
While Denca customers typically already have automated production lines with data being acquired, a BEMS takes this activity to a new level delivering a company-wide picture of energy use across production, warehousing and even the offices.
We are currently working on such a project for a major NW based food manufacturer.
We are working closely with our customer to realise a practical and effective system design and we are currently installing the data acquisition and recording systems.
Key specifications include:
- 12x Siemens S7-1500 PLCs located across the site.
- 12x Remote IO racks – one for each PLC
- 227x energy meters (between 6 and 23 reporting to each PLC)
Each energy meter uses a Current Transformer to monitor the energy use at each target location.
Data from the energy meters is communicated to the PLCs where key performance indicator (KPI) values are calculated. These include:
- Total energy consumption
- Energy cost
- Efficiencies over time
- Impact of different processes
A central SCADA reads each PLC and displays the information for the operator action.
As well as enable real-time efficiency management, the data is stored in a Historian database that can be used to monitor and report trends to identify further opportunities for efficiency improvements.
Denca has delivered significant software support to integrate all elements of the new system across the site.
Because our customer operates 3 shifts, 24 hours per day during the week, Denca has to work closely with shop floor production staff and use weekends to ensure that the installation and commission work has no negative impact on time-critical production schedules.
If you would like to find out more about how Denca Controls can help delivers BEMS to improve your efficiency, do get in touch.