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SIMATIC Energy Manager serves efficiency at Brau Union

Brau Union relies on the SIMATIC Energy Manager: With a comprehensive energy management solution, Brau Union Österreich AG promotes an efficient and sustainable use of resources in its breweries.

Challenge: best practice for greater energy efficiency

Breweries must use a lot of energy in their processes to give their products the necessary maturity and flavor. Brau Union Österreich AG uses a cross-plant and high-performance software solution for energy monitoring and management to improve energy efficiency and to implement process optimizations and to comply with the requirements of the Federal Energy Efficiency Law (EEffG).

The goal: cross-plant energy management with a scalable layout

Energy efficiency has been a target at Brau Union Österreich for decades, explains Engineer Johann Hölzl, head of process automation at Brau Union Österreich. For more than three decades, he has been concerned with the consistent increase of energy efficiency at the Wieselburg brewery. He is currently working with his team in a project that involves implementing a solution for the automatic recording and evaluation of the media and energy flows – initially at the Wieselburg production site. Later on, other company sites are planned to become part of the system, starting with the breweries in Zipf, Schwechat, Göss, Puntigam.

The Wieselburg brewhouse, where Brau Union creates a part of Austria’s beer culture.

Brau Union Österreich AG: Celebrating Austrian beer culture

For Brau Union Österreich AG, beer is much more than a beverage, it is part of the cultural heritage. The company sees itself as an outstanding pillar of Austria's beer culture and promote social and environmental responsibility, for the benefit of all.

Aerial view of the Wieselburger Bier brewery tower and production facility surrounded by green fields.

Bound by tradition, committed to the future.

Brau Union Österreich produces more than 5.0 million hectoliters of beer annually, with thirteen leading brands, more than 100 types of beer, and ongoing innovations. Part of the international HEINEKEN family since 2003, the company's 2,500 employees in Austria supply around 49,000 customers and millions of beer lovers nationwide. Brau Union Österreich relies on the best raw materials, high quality standards and sustainable production, both environmentally and socially. In line with HEINEKEN's "Brewing a better world" strategy, the company has set clear sustainability goals for 2030, including an 80 percent reduction in production related CO2 emissions compared to the 2008 reference year. A comprehensive energy management system is part of this strategy.

We need a cross-plant energy management system which allows easy data recording and standardized reporting.
Eng. Johann Hölzl, Process Automation & IT SC OpCo, Brau Union Österreich AG

The solution in detail: Energy transparency and efficiency by design

As production capacity is constantly expanded, the corresponding supply networks in breweries are mostly very complex and thus are not ideal for strategic measures for increasing efficiency. However, the current brewery in Wieselburg, although founded in 1770, was completely rebuilt in 1973, so it is essentially a greenfield plant and is thus easier to manage. This is why Brau Union chose Wieselburg as the pilot site for the new energy management system SIMATIC Energy Manager PRO.

More energy efficiency thanks to SIMATIC Energy Management

With the SIMATIC Energy Manager PRO, Brau Union is, for the first time, using a standardized tool which is powerful and scalable and meets the expectations in regard to handling and future capabilities. In the first step, around 1,000 measuring points have been defined and evenly distributed throughout the five sites. "If we later see a roll out at other sites, they can be seamlessly and easily integrated due to the scalable program layout of the SIMATIC Energy Manager PRO," explains Johann Hölzl. To integrate data acquisition points into the system, the low-voltage main distribution boards are retrofitted with SENTRON PAC 3200 power meters.

The team at Brau Union: project lead engineer Johann Hölzl and MSc Michael Steiger, technical service

Automated data acquisition

The values are acquired by the Energy Manager in 15-minute cycles via Modbus/TCP to match the data intervals of the power utilities’ energy data acquisition. In addition, the production data of the machine data acquisition system SIMATIC IT (MES) from Siemens that was recorded by process technology is written back into the controllers and read into the energy management system for the evaluation of the batch-related use of energy. "This too functions automatically, adding to the operational benefits of the software," says Johann Hölzl. Other meters whose automation is correspondingly time-consuming and costly are manually recorded and added to the system in the first step of the project. To this end, Siemens offers the SIMATIC Energy Manager app, which conveniently allows the use of smartphones for mobile data acquisition.

Our maintenance staff are equipped with mobile devices they can use to conveniently collect data for the energy management system.
MSc Michael Steiger, Technical Service, Brau Union

Efficient and standardized energy management

Brau Union Österreich benefits in several ways from SIMATIC Energy Manager PRO. The integrated system provides a harmonized view of production and energy management and enables the standardized acquisition of energy and consumption data across the company. Consumption can be assigned to units, departments, and cost centers, while standardized structures for energy and water meters ensure consistent data management. This creates a reliable foundation for company-wide energy management and continuous improvement initiatives. "This allows us to remain autonomous in terms of data and to maintain the necessary proximity to production," explains Johann Hölzl.

The team shows a monitor display with detailed reports created by the energy management system from current data every 15 min

Key benefits

Easy connection using standard interfaces

Despite limited in-house resources, the new energy management system was implemented in a short time. Standardized interfaces make it easy to integrate new measuring points and maintain the system with minimal effort.

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Detailed reports every 15 minutes

The system generates energy reports based on automatically collected data every 15 minutes instead of monthly manual readings. Standardized meter naming and app based data entry further simplify energy and water monitoring.

0.6% less energy consumption per year

With its new energy management system, Brau Union Österreich meets national energy efficiency requirements. The software helps identify process improvements and supports a more systematic approach to energy savings.

Product highlights: Integrated energy management with SIMATIC

With SIMATIC Energy Management, Brau Union Österreich AG is relying on a powerful, versatile and scalable portfolio of systems and products for energy management. This allows for the implementation of pioneering solutions that also meet the requirements of ISO 50001.

Features of the SIMATIC Energy Manager

  • Lower operating costs, optimize energy procurement, and comply with legal requirements
  • Scalable, TÜV-certified solution for ISO 50001-compliant energy management for industry
  • SIMATIC Energy Manager Basic for a simple way of getting started with energy management
  • SIMATIC Energy Manager PRO for comprehensive, ISO-compliant energy management
  • SIMATIC Energy Manager V1.0 app for iOS and Android for mobile recording of non-networked consumption data Discover the portfolio
Digital overlay of energy production data and charts above a bottling and production facility