It all began with the War of the Currents…

Today, people greatly appreciate having electrical energy available at the flip of a switch, seemingly at any time and for any occasion. But where does electricity actually come from? The answer most people would give you is: “from the wall socket, of course”. So does this automatically settle the question of security of supply? More on this later.

If we compare the history of electric current with the 75 years of the history of Camille Bauer Metrawatt AG, it is easy to see how they were interlinked at certain times in the course of their development. Why is that?

It all began with the War of the Currents – an economic dispute about a technical standard

It was around 1890 when the so-called War of the Currents started in the USA. At that time, the question was whether the direct current favoured by Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) or the alternating current promoted by Nicola Tesla (1856-1943) and financially supported by George Westinghouse (1846-1914), was the more suitable technology for supplying the United States of America with electrical energy over large areas and constructing power grids. Because of Westinghouse’s market dominance at that time compared to Edison General Electric (called General Electric from 1890 on), it soon became clear that the alternating voltage invented by Nicola Tesla was rapidly gaining the upper hand. This was not least because its approximately 25% lower transmission losses weighed unquestionably in its favour. Soon afterward, came the breakthrough for alternating voltage as the means of transmitting electrical energy using. Initially, the main target application was electric lighting, which to be spurred on by the invention of the incandescent lamp by Edison. The reasons for this were logical. Westinghouse was initially a lighting manufacturing company and wanted to secure as great a market share as possible.

As developments continued, it is no surprise that already by 1891, in Germany for example, the first long-distance transmission of electrical energy was put into operation, over a distance of more than 170 km from Lauffen am Neckar to Frankfurt am Main. It was a technological breakthrough using three-phase current technology. However, this has by no means been the end of the story for direct current. Not least because of digitalization, electromobility, decentralized energy supplies, etc., DC voltage has experienced a full-blown renaissance and now is treated almost as a brand-new topic.

The Camille Bauer story.
The foundation of the Camille Bauer company dates back to 1900, immediately after the War of the Currents just described, at a time when electricity was rapidly gaining in importance. At the turn of the century, the Camille Bauer company, named after its founder Camille Bauer-Judlin, began importing measuring instruments for the trendy new phenomenon called “electricity” into Switzerland for sale to the local market. Some years later, in 1906, Dr. Siegfried Guggenheimer (1875 – 1938), formerly a research scientist for Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845 – 1923) and who in 1901, became the first winner of the Nobel Prize for physics, founded what was a start-up company in Nuremberg, Germany, trading under his own name. The company was engaged in the production and sale of electrical measuring instruments. However, due to pressure from the Nazis because Dr. Guggenheimer was of Jewish descent, he had to rename the company in 1933, creating Metrawatt AG.

Four technological segments.

In 1919, a man by the name of Paul Gossen entered the picture. He was so dissatisfied with his employment with Dr. Guggenheimer that he founded his own company in Erlangen, near Nuremberg, and for decades the two rivals were continuously in fierce competition with one another. In 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, Camille Bauer could see that its importing business had virtually come to a standstill. All the factories of its suppliers, which were mainly in Germany (for example Hartmann & Braun, Voigt & Haeffner, Lahmeyer, etc.), had been converted to supplying materials for the war. At this point, a decision had to be made quickly. Camille Bauer’s original trading company located in Basel (CH), undertook a courageous transformation. In order to survive, it turned itself into a manufacturing company. In a first step, the recently formed manufacturing company Matter, Patocchi & Co. AG in Wohlen (CH) was taken over, in order to be get the business up and running quickly with the necessary operating resources at their disposal. Thus the Swiss manufacturing base in Wohlen in the canton of Aargau was born.

The story does not end there. In 1979, Camille Bauer was taken over by Röchling a family-owned company in Mannheim, Germany. At that time, Röchling wanted to quit the iron and steel business and enter the field of I&C technology. Later, in 1993, Gossen in Erlangen and Metrawatt in Nuremberg were reunited in a single company, after Röchling became owner of the Gossen holding company as a result of the acquisition of the Bergmann Group from Siemens in 1989, and Metrawatt was acquired from ABB in 1992. At the same time, Camille Bauer’s German sales operation in Frankfurt-Dreieich also became a part of the company. Today the companies operate globally and successfully under the umbrella brand of GMC-I (Gossen Metrawatt Camille-Bauer-Instruments).

A new era.
The physics of electric current have not changed over the course of time. However, business conditions have changed drastically, especially over the last 5-10 years. Catch phrases such as electricity free market, collective self-consumption, renewable energy sources, PV, wind power, climate targets, reduction of CO2 emissions, e-mobility, battery storage, Tesla, smart meters, digitalization, cyber security, network quality, etc. are all areas of interest for both people and companies. And last but not least, with today’s protest demonstrations, climate change has become a political issue. We will have to see what results from this. At the very least, the catch phrases mentioned above are perfect for developing scenarios for electricity supply security. And it really is the case that the traditional electricity infrastructure, which is often as old as Camille Bauer Metrawatt itself, was not designed for the new types of energy behaviour, either those on the consumer side or the decentralised feed-in side. As a result, it is ever more important to have increasing numbers of intelligent systems which need to work from basic data obtained from precise measurements in order to avoid outages, blackouts and resulting damage.

The overall diversity of these new clusters of topics has prompted Camille Bauer Metrawatt AG to once more face the challenges with courage and above all to do so in an innovative and productive way. In this spirit, Camille Bauer Metrawatt AG develops, produces and distributes its product range globally in 4 technological segments.

These are:
(1) Measurement & Display,
(2) Power Quality,
(3) Control & Monitoring,
(4) Software, Systems and Solutions.

Through its expert staff, modern tools and external partners Camille Bauer Metrawatt is able, for example, to analyse power quality and detect power quality problems. In addition, the Camille Bauer Metrawatt Academy, recently founded in 2019, puts its focus on knowledge transfer by experienced lecturers, with the latest and most important topics as its main priority. Furthermore, we keep in very close contact with customers, authorities, associations, specialist committees, educational institutions, practice-oriented experts and the scientific community in order to continually provide the requisite solutions to the market and interested parties.

#Camille_Bauer_Metrawatt #PAuto @irishpwrprocess

GIS in power!

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are not a new phenomenon. The technology was first used during World War II to gather intelligence by taking aerial photographs. However, today’s applications for GIS are far more sophisticated. Here, Martyn Williams, managing director of  COPA-DATA UK, explains how the world’s energy industry is becoming smarter, using real-time GIS.

GIS mapping is everywhere. In its most basic format, the technology is simply a computerised mapping system that collects location-based data — think Google Maps and its live traffic data. Crime mapping, computerised road networking and the tech that tags your social media posts in specific locations? That’s GIS too.

Put simply, anywhere that data can be generated, analysed and pinned to a specific geographical point, there’s potential for GIS mapping. That said, for the energy industry, GIS can provide more value than simply pinning where your most recent selfie was taken.

Managing remote assets
One of the biggest challenges for the industry is effectively managing geographically dispersed sites and unmanned assets, such as wind turbines, offshore oil rigs or remote electrical substations.

Take an electrical distribution grid as an example. Of the 400,000 substations scattered across Britain, many are remote and unmanned. Therefore, it is common for operators to rely on a connected infrastructure and control software to obtain data from these sites. While this data is valuable, it is the integration of GIS mapping that enables operators to gain a full visual overview of their entire grid.

Using GIS, operators are provided with a map of the grid and every substation associated with it. When this visualisation is combined with intelligent control software, the operator can pin data from these remote sites on one easy-to-read map.

Depending on the sophistication of the control software used, the map can illustrate the productivity, energy consumption or operational data from each substation. In fact, operators can often choose to see whatever data is relevant to them and adjust their view to retrieve either more, or less, data from the map.

When used for renewable energy generation, the operator may want to see the full geographical scope of the wind turbines they control, pin-pointed on a geographically accurate map. However, upon zooming into the map, it is possible for the operator to view the status, control and operational data from each turbine on the grid.

GIS mapping is not only advantageous for monitoring routine operations, but also for alerting operators of unexpected faults in the system.

Taking out the guesswork
Unexpected equipment failure can be devastating to any business. However, when managing assets in the energy industry, providing a fundamental service to the public, the impact of downtime can be devastating.

Traditionally, energy organisations would employ huge maintenance teams to quickly react to unexpected errors, like power outages or equipment breakdowns. However, with GIS and software integration, this guesswork approach to maintenance is not necessary.

The combination of GIS with an intelligent control system means that operators will be alerted of faults in real-time, regardless of whether it occurs at an offshore wind turbine, a remote pumping station or a substation. When an error is identified, the operator is automatically informed of exactly where the fault has occurred, by a pinpoint on the map.

Enabling intelligent maintenance
In the energy industry, there is no sure-fire way to predict exactly how and when faults will occur, but there are ways to deploy reliability centred maintenance (RCM) techniques to minimise downtime when they do.

Using GIS-mapping and alerts, an operator can accurately pinpoint the location of the error, and a maintenance engineer can be deployed to the site immediately. This allows organisations to plan more effectively from a human asset perspective, ensuring their engineers are in the right places at the right time.

In addition, using the data acquired by the control software, the engineer can then take a more intelligent approach to maintenance. GIS mapping allows an operator to easily extract data from the exact location that the fault occurred, passing this to the engineer for more intelligent maintenance.

For the energy industry, GIS technology provides an opportunity to better understand remote operations, enables more effective maintenance and could dramatically minimises downtime caused by unexpected errors. The reliability of the technology has already been proven in other industry areas, like crime mapping, road networking — and for novelty applications, like social media tagging.

Now, it’s time for the energy industry to make its mark on the GIS map.

PICTIÚIRÍ: Industry 4.0 concept reviewed in Limerick.

EPLAN joined forces with ABB, DesignPro, Douglas Automation, Igus, Industrial Society of Automation (Ireland Section ISA), Omron, Panasonic, Prion PLM, Portalis, Rittal Ireland, Rockwell Automation, Siemens, SL Controls and Weidmuller to bring Industry 4.0 to the Limerick Institute of Technology.

More Pictures on Twitter.
The LimerickIT feed (4 pics).
Abb Feed (1 pic)
Other pics retweeted on Eplan UK Feed.

In the wake of the next industrial revolution, EPLAN hosted the event at The Limerick Institute of Technology with the aim of discussing the German concept, Industry 4.0. The event will allowed companies to understand what 4.0 means and how existing and near future technologies can help them move towards becoming a smart factory which ultimately produce machines and products that effectively talk to one another.

Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0) is a high-tech strategy adopted by the German government which promotes the computerisation of traditional industries such as manufacturing. The goal is to create intelligent factories (smart factory) that focus on cyber physical systems primarily consisting of communication technologies, software, senses and processes – all of which have the potential through cloud technology to communicate and interact with each other in an intelligent way.

The well attended event had over 150 registered to attend and many more came without registering.

These are some pictures to give a flavour of the event.

Busy associated exhibition area.

Professor Vincent Cunnane, President of LIT welcomes delegates!

Delegates await the next speaker.

 

Dr Frances Hardiman, Head of Department Electrical and Electronic Engineering discusses the place of LIT in the engineering community.

EPLAN’s Ken Christie welcomes delegates and addresses his company’s place in Industrie 4.0.

Justin Leonard of Igus.

Micahel Gartz of Panasonic

Declan McDevitt of Siemens

Another view of the exhibition area.

@EPLAN_UK @LimerickIT #PAuto #Industry4

Future factory – a moderator’s impression!

Read-out was asked to moderate the automation stream at the National Manufacturing & Supplies conference held last week outside Dublin. (26th January 2016). In their wisdom the organisers selected “Future Factory!” as a title for this half day seminar and there were 11 speakers organised to speak on their particular subjects for about 15 minutes each. This was replicated in the the over a dozen different seminars held on this one day.

Long queues lasted well into the morning to enter the event!

We were a little sceptical that this would work but with the help of the organisers and the discipline of the speakers the time targets were achieved. Another target achieved was the number of attendees at the event as well as those who attended this particular seminar.
In all between exhibitors, speakers and visitors well over 3000 packed the venue. Probably far more than the organisers had anticipated and hopefully a potent sign that the economy is again on the upturn. Indeed it was so successful that it was trending (#MSC16) on twitter for most of the day.

Seminar
But back to our seminar. If you google the term Future Factory you get back 207million links, yet it is difficult to find a simple definition as to what it means. The term automation similarly is a very difficult term to define though the term in Irish “uathoibriú” perhaps is a bit clearer literally meaning “self-working.”

Good attendance at the Seminar

Background
The world of automation has changed to an extrordinary degree and yet in other ways it remains the same. The areas where it has experienced least change is in the areas of sensing – a thermometer is a thermometer – and final control – a valve is a valve. Where it has changed almost to the point of unrecognisability is in that bit in the middle, what one does with the signal from the sensor to activate the final control element.

From single parameter dedicated Indicator/Controller/Recorders in the sixties which transmitted either pnuematically (3-15psi) or electrically (4-20mA). Gradually (relatively speaking) most instruments became electronic, smaller in size and multifunctional. The means of communication changed too and fieldbus communication became more common to intercact with computors which themselves were developing at breaknech speed. Then transmission via wireless became more common and finally the internet and the ability to control a process from the computer that we call the intelligent phone. There are problems with these latter, internet/cellphone, of course. One is that the reach of the internet is focussed at present on areas of high population. Another is the danger of infiltration of systems by hostile or mischivous strangers. The importance of security protocols is one that has only recently been apparent to Automation professionals.

• Many of the presentations are available on-line here. The password is manufac2016

The Presentations
Maria Archer of Ericsson spoke on the enabling and facilitating IoT in the manufacturing industry. Diving straight into topic she drew on her experience of big data, e-commerce, media, cyber security, IOT and connected devices.

The second speaker was Cormac Garvey of Hal Software who addressed Supply Chain prototyping. The Supply Chain ecosystem is incredibly complex, usually requiring significant integration of each suppliers’ standards and processes to the manufacturer’s. Cormac will introduce the concept of supply chain prototyping, where easy-to-use, standards-based technology is used to wireframe out the entire supply chain ecosystem prior to integration, thus significantly reducing cost, time and risk on the project. This wireframe can then be used as a model for future integration projects.

Two speakers from the Tralee Institute of Technology, Dr. Pat Doody and Dr. Daniel Riordan spoke on RFID, IoT, Sensor & Process Automation for Industry 4.0. They explained how IMaR’s (Intelligent Mechatronics and RFID) expertise is delivering for their industrial partners and is available to those aiming to become a part of Industry 4.0.

Smart Manufacturing – the power of actionable data was the topic addressed by Mark Higgins of Fast Technology. He shared his understanding of the acute issues companies face on their journey to Business Excellence and how leveraging IT solutions can elevate the business to a new point on that journey.

Assistant Professor (Mechanical & Manuf. Eng) at TCD, Dr Garret O’Donnell,   explained how one of the most significant initiatives in the last 2 years has been the concept of the 4th industrial revolution promoted by the National Academy for Science and Engineering in Germany- ACATECH, known as Industrie 4.0. (Industrie 4.0 was first used as a term in Germany in 2011).

Another speaker from Fast Technologies, Joe Gallaher, addressed the area of Robotics and how Collaborative Robots are the “Game Changer” in the modern manufacturing facility.

Dr. Hassan Kaghazchi of the University of Limerick and Profibus spoke on PROFINET and Industrie 4.0. Industrial communications systems play a major role in today’s manufacturing systems. The ability to provide connectivity, handle large amount of data, uptime, open standards, safety, and security are the major deciding factors. This presentation shows how PROFINET fits into Industrial Internet of Things (Industrie 4.0).

Maurice Buckley CEO NSAI

The CEO of NSAI, the Irish National Standards Authority, Maurice Buckley explained how standards and the National Standards Authority of Ireland can help Irish businesses take advantage of the fourth industrial revolution and become more prepared to reap the rewards digitisation can bring.

The next two speakers stressed the impact of low forecast accuracy on the bottom line and how this coulbe be addressed. Jaap Piersma a consultant with SAS UK & Ireland explained that low forecast accuracies on the business performance is high in industry but with the right tools, the right approach and experienced resources you can achieve very significant result and benefits for your business. Following him Dave Clarke, Chief Data Scientist at Asystec, who mantains the company strategy for big data analytics service development for customers. He showed how are incredible business opportunities possible by harnessing the massive data sets generated in the machine to machine and person to machine hyper connected IoT world.

The final speaker David Goodstein, Connected Living Project Director, GSMA, described new form factor mobile SIMs which are robust, remotely manageable which are an essential enabler for applications and services in the connected world.

All in all a very interesting event and useful to attendees. Papers are being collected and should be available shortly on-line.

It is hoped to do it all again next year on 24th January 2017- #MSC17.

See you there.

@NationalMSC #MSC16 #PAuto #IoT

Global HMI market!

Human machine interface (HMI) solutions have made rapid strides in the last decade in step with changing customer demands. As the trend towards real-time factory intelligence gains widespread acceptance in industries, HMI software will continue to evolve. From merely providing plant data on a mobile device, HMI now delivers real-time data and actionable insights to operators. The consequent benefits, such as lower plant operation costs, higher process efficiency, and greater energy efficiency will power the adoption of HMI solutions.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Global Human Machine Interface Market, finds that the market earned revenues of $2.94 billion in 2014 and estimates this to reach $3.60 billion in 2018.

“The development of Industrie 4.0 in Europe and Smart Factory in the United States will create a future for the manufacturing sector wrapped around the convergence of applications,” said Frost & Sullivan Industrial Automation and Process Control Research Analyst Guru Mahesh. “As a result, the need to constantly innovate and reinvent components will propel the uptake of HMI in discrete sectors.”

Unlike discrete industries, process industries such as chemicals, food and oil can get by with basic automation solutions for production in bulk quantities. Hence, advanced HMI solutions have found restricted use in the process sector.

While this trend continues to pervade several process industries, the food and beverage sector is gradually giving in to the allure of HMI solutions. Manufacturers in this increasingly competitive segment have understood that automation is critical in order to remain profitable. Likewise, growing awareness in other process sectors will open up new applications for HMI solutions.

“Real-time intelligence and big data analytics are expected to revolutionise the HMI space,” noted Mahesh. “To capitalise on these opportunities, HMI vendors must meet the demand for innovative features and value-added services from end users in the global market.”