Schmiedewerk Stooss AG manufactures high-quality forged parts at its facility in Hedingen and exports these products worldwide. The various forging furnaces, presses, milling machines and heat treatment furnaces use a great deal of electricity at Switzerland's largest forging facility. In order to utilise this energy optimally and enable the reduction of power costs, Schmiedewerk Stooss AG is relying on the Xamax energy optimisation system.
Alpiq equipped the facility with a fully-automatic load management system in May 2018. The Xamax system controls four furnaces with a connected load between 150 and 320 kilowatts, a polymer quenching tank with 150 kilowatts and the hydraulic drives for the forging presses. The maximum, quarter-hourly load peak of originally two megawatts was reduced by around 200 kilowatts thanks to the load management system. Using the Xamax software, Stooss can visualise the performance values in real-time, as well as record and analyse 16 additional sub-measurements. For example, multiple transformer stations, furnaces and forging presses can be monitored individually. This data transparency enables the company to realise additional cost savings thanks to lower power consumption.
The load management system has resulted in a yearly cost reduction amounting to about CHF 15,000. "The professional implementation and the technical solutions convinced me," says Josef Nussbaumer, Chairman of Schmiedewerk Stooss AG.
Looking to the medium term, the modular Xamax system has already been equipped to optimise hourly peak loads for gas consumption. In the course of project realisation, the power savings potential for lighting and electric drives was also analysed.
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