Electric.ie September - October Edition

ELECTRIC.IE • The Magazine & Website for the Irish Electrical Industry • 45 The company specialises in putting sensors into buildings to make them smarter and deliver real time location services. “We can track any device as it moves around a facility using multi-functional sensors and Bluetooth beacons”, he added. “The technology can see where a piece of equipment in a hospital is at any time. Do you need a free wheelchair? It will locate it.” Killarney based Straightline Energy Solutions is using data to deliver quite dramatic reductions in energy usage. The company’s EscoPod system is a thermal technology for the production of hot water for manufacturing facilities. “Our gas turbine powered hybrid heat pump system leads to savings of around 80 per cent compared to conventional methods of producing heat”, said Managing Director John O’Leary. “We use a Siemens cloud-based monitoring system to monitor the performance of the EscoPod system. Using conventional systems, half the fuel purchased is being dumped because the lack of baseline data. That is quite astounding.” Dr Colin Clarke of the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) noted that the new technologies are affecting the pharmaceutical process itself. “NIBRT is using artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to improve our understanding of the manufacturing processes in the biopharma industry with the goal of improving efficiency in drug production”, he said. “Mindsphere, the Siemens cloud based open IoT platform, is being developed to apply data-based analytics solutions to real time manufacturing activities and identify potential improvements for the production of various medicines.” Florian Moebis works in business development for digital applications within Siemens Low Voltage Power Distribution. He looked at digitalisation behind the meter and in front of the meter and explained how Siemens customer Gestamp Spain is generating value from IoT in power distribution by improving energy efficiency and performance. “They have 15 factories in six countries, have saved €18 million on energy bills, reduced energy consumption by 15 per cent, and saved 14,000 tonnes of CO2.” The future energy landscape was addressed by John Turner of Siemens who gave the example of Keele University. “The university had aspirations to become the largest single, integrated electricity, gas and heat Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) and appointed Siemens to help them achieve this”, he said. “It will be the first facility in Europe for at-scale living laboratory research, development and demonstration of new smart energy technologies and services in partnership with business and industry. It involves the digitalisation of 24 substations, the installation of 1500 smart meters, 500 home controllers and a 5 MW renewable integration package. This is a blueprint for other colleges to follow in future.” Other speakers on the day included Kevin Donovan of Roadstone who explained how Siemens assisted the company to achieve major savings in its quarrying activities through better use of data; Salvador Sumohano Verdeja, Head of Digitalisation for Power and Gas in Siemens GB and Ireland, who shared a vision of remote operation of power generation facilities in a future digital world; while Jan Gebhardt digitalisation and innovation lead for Siemens Region Europe Steam Power Plant business explained that collaboration is the key to successful transformation. “When we meet a client, we do a discovery session to find out what’s important to them”, he said. “If we find that we don’t already have a solution, we’ll admit that, and we’ll collaborate with them and guide them through the process of finding one.” For more information go to https://sie.ag/2CzbvZd Industry News Siemen A Virtual Reality Demonstration Mindsphere is Siemens Cloud Based IOT Platform