Family-owned companies traditionally look far beyond the edges of their quarterly reports and often think sustainably - and WAGO is no exception.

Achim Zerbst, Facility Manager and Chief Energy Manager at WAGO

For us, energy efficiency is a natural part of our corporate culture, which leads to a list of measures that can be continued indefinitely. We are also directly investing in the local expansion of photovoltaics and wind energy, i.e., truly renewable solutions.

Achim Zerbst, Facility Manager and Chief Energy Manager at WAGO

For example, the WAGO Automation Solution is used to control lighting in the office spaces and production areas based on the needs and presence of the users, the blinds and shutters are opened and closed depending on the time of day and light incidence, and the air conditioning in work spaces is set at the lower range of the comfort zone.

The optimized interactions between sensors and actuators via centralized or decentralized controllers can save up to 50 percent in operating costs for room lighting, and just over 30 percent for room air conditioning. Measures, which have already been proven at WAGO, can also be applied to other industrial sectors. The extensive portfolio of interface solutions available for bus systems and subsystems in room automation allows for a wide variety of applications.

If the proportion of electrical energy in consumption increases as desired, the supply question becomes obvious: Where does the electricity come from? The answer can be found on the roofs of a large number of WAGO locations: WAGO invests in its own photovoltaic systems wherever that is possible, that is, locations where other environmental projects, like green roofs, are not already established or planned. “We already have a 200 kW system on the roof at our headquarters in Minden. In Päpinghausen, near Minden, we have just under 700 kW. At our location in India, we operate a PV system that generates more than one megawatt of power. We have other projects in the pipeline, both in Germany and abroad, that will allow us to assume responsibility for generating our own renewable electricity,” explains Zerbst.

Energy Distribution Requires New Regulations

In association with this initiative, WAGO exemplifies the new challenges of a society based on renewable energy. From the rooftops, it is clear that the classic path of power distribution — from the power plant through the energy supplier to the grid connection point — is changing. Lukas Dökel knows how to maintain stability in the grid, despite the volatility caused by decentralized generation of electricity.

As Head of Industry and Key Account Management for Digital Plant at WAGO, he is close to both in-house and external clients. “Renewable energy generation on the hall roof, privately-owned combined heat and power plants and the ever-increasing number of charging stations — the infrastructures have already changed and must be managed differently than before,” says Dökel, adding, “We’re finding the right answers here.”

“In our production, we ensure the intelligent and flexible distribution of energy flows, which work resiliently. Our systems orchestrate the generation, consumption and distribution in the systems — inspired by the microgrid idea,” explains Dökel.

Therefore, he and his colleagues fall back on corresponding solutions to link and control all of the participants in an industrial infrastructure into a so-called microgrid.

The entire system should have appropriate intelligent “contacts”, both in the network and at the individual units. These are also sometimes challenging projects because, depending on conditions at their location, they have to exchange data seamlessly and with low latency over longer distances — as in an efficient microgrid.

“Despite the fact that e-mobility is a positive development, this trend presents challenges at the logistics level.” Dökel addresses another aspect, and WAGO provides yet another example: e-vehicles that require charging are becoming increasingly common, both in the parking lots for employees and those for visitors. The company vehicles are now fully electric. At each location, a growing fleet of e-vehicles — that will require charging in the company parking lot at the beginning of a shift — represents a hurdle for capacity.

To meet these challenges, WAGO provides intelligent charging management to ensure that no vehicle battery is left uncharged and that production continues to run seamlessly through its own peak loads. The key phrase is energy flexibility. Whether at its own locations and those of its clients, WAGO directs the energy supply and consumption flows, balances them out, and determines both how much of its own renewable energy is currently available and the direction of the price for renewable energy on the market.

At the same time, focus remains on how to distribute or reduce the peak load generated by plant operations. WAGO controllers make it easy for users to analyze load distributions during production and to harmonize them with a view toward demand pricing. Due to the ease of integrating WAGO’s load management individual desires and calculations can be taken into account.

Looking to The Future

Achim Zerbst sees three main product areas as essential for meeting his responsibilities in the future. “If I had to commit to a few selections from the entire spectrum of possibilities, I would choose load management for the charging infrastructure, energy data management for energy and infrastructure monitoring, and lighting management as an optimization potential for lighting control.

There are, of course, many other solutions that also greatly contribute to increased sustainability.” This also includes, for example, the connection of customer transfer stations to the medium-voltage network. This will become even more important in the future, as companies will function both as energy suppliers, and also as load providers for grid stabilization.