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SCADA - October 2003
Saving energy in food manufacture
Cambell's Grocery Products in Worksop, UK, has taken energy usage
extremely seriously. It employs an Energy Manager to monitor the
consumption of gas, electricity, water, steam and compressed air,
with a view to making savings through reduced wastage and improved
efficiency. As modern food manufacturing is highly complex, Campbell's
needed a system to monitor utility consumption across five centres
at its Worksop site, and able to monitor specific production zones
or discrete items of equipment.
Industrial Control Solutions (ICS) was asked to investigate and,
following a review of the alternatives, it recommended a Siemens
SIMATIC WinCC SCADA package. Compared with other SCADA packages
or dedicated energy management packages, WinCC was seen to be far
more flexible and has an integrated Web Navigator, whereas other
SCADA packages would have required a bolt-on internet publishing
tool. The advantage of the web navigator is that it enables users
to access the system from anywhere on site via the intranet. Users
can see on-screen replicas of the meter displays and this provides
a means of verifying that the system is functioning correctly simply
by comparing values read from the on-screen meter with the actual
meter.
"WinCC is unusual in that it requires no PLCs," says Steve McDermott,
the Business Development Manager at ICS. "Remote meters connect
to the system over a radio link and use DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange)
to add their data to a relational database on the system's hard
disc. Our experience is that WinCC is better at handling these DDE
links than other packages. We were also able to provide a facility
so that users could input additional data via Excel spreadsheets."
WinCC has helped Campbell's comply with the industry requirements
for metering and targeting, but it has also contributed to them
making a massive six-figure financial saving over the last three
years. Bearing in mind that the project cost was £70,000 (euro100,000)
overall, the payback period was less than one year. Reducing energy
consumption is not a one-off activity, so further improvements are
still being worked on, some of which may require expansion of the
WinCC system. In 2005 the food industry will see the introduction
of the European Integrated Pollution Control Certificate (IPCC),
for which the monitoring and reporting it provides will be invaluable.
Siemens
Reply number s102
Industrial Control Solutions
Reply number s105
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