W&H: Tailor-made system prevents costly downtime

Until now, large industrial machines could not be protected by using an emergency power supply based on lithium-ion batteries for technical and economic reasons. The problem was that either the operator installed its own lead battery configuration according to its own understanding, which did not meet the international conventions of norming or safety, or the diesel generator predominantly used for this purpose required several minutes to start up. Costly production downtime or fault-ridden processes that only waste time were the result of power failures. Commeo, the innovation leader for industrial battery systems, now has the solution for this expensive problem. In a pilot plant operated by the renowned mechanical engineering company Windmöller & Hölscher (W&H), the first online UPS system on the market is currently being deployed, and aims guarantees a seamless production process even in the event of power failures and grid fluctuations by means of modular lithium-ion energy storage.

The uncompromising in-house developments and production at Commeo allow it to meet the needs of very different market requirements and satisfy customer demands down to the very last detail. This case involves the highly complex TIRATEX packaging plants produced by W&H, which melt plastics and use an extruder to generate extremely thin films that serve as the raw material for commercial packaging.
During a power outage, the plant immediately comes to a standstill – the plastic film tears off, the heating elements fail, and the plastic clogs the entire machine. Even if a generator is available for an emergency power supply, the generator would need a few minutes to start up. In order to be able to return the system to operation, it used to have to be taken apart and cleaned with chemical cleaning agents in a painstaking process. During the time this took, further production was unthinkable.

Intelligent interaction
The solution was obvious for the Commeo developer team: interaction between the intelligent lithium-ion battery systems and the highly efficient uninterruptible power supply by the specialist for power supply systems, Wöhrle. The joint development now ensures that the packaging line can be kept in operation without any problems until the generator has been started up. In order to cover the requirements, Commeo is deploying its modular, highly intelligently connected energy storage blocks for the TIRATEX packaging plant. The battery system can provide a discharge capacity of up to 6 C with a capacity of 200 kW on a floor space measuring less than 1 m².

Tailor-made complete system
The pilot plant has been set up and is in operation for demonstration purposes for interested partners and customers at the Windmöller & Hölscher showroom. However, it’s not just the customers of W&H that benefit from the innovations of the development partners Commeo and Wöhrle: based on the experience they have gained, the two specialists aim to put together a complete uninterruptible power supply system consisting of a lithium-ion battery system and
uninterruptible power supply power electronics, and which can be specifically tailored to all other customer requirements.

More profitability and a longer lifespan
The system doesn’t just pay off from a technical point of view; it also offers compelling economic benefits. The first lithium-ion battery-based uninterruptible emergency power supply has an amortisation period of less than three years. And: “Beyond outage protection, the system comprised of lithium-ion storage in a UPS system guarantees a considerably longer lifespan for the electronic components in a highly complex production plant on the one hand, while also avoiding the impact of grid fluctuations on the other hand, thereby reliably ruling out system failure,” says Frank Vöge, Head of Sales and Project Management, in conclusion.