Conveniently located along the highway, the Kalle-Albert Industrial Park in Wiesbaden offers everything modern manufacturing companies require from infrastructure services: from efficient energy supply to IT, logistics, safety services, and environmentally friendly industrial wastewater treatment. Around 75 production companies from various industries – including food, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals – are already established on the nearly 100-hectare site, with little space left available.
Independent in power and steam
Industrial parks of this scale consume as much energy annually as a city of roughly 300,000 inhabitants. In times of volatile and high energy prices, this poses significant challenges for operators. To become less dependent on the energy market, InfraServ Wiesbaden (ISW) invested early in a new gas and steam power plant. Since 2021, the facility has generated approximately 300 GWh of electricity and 600 GWh of heat in the form of steam annually. When production exceeds demand, ISW feeds surplus electricity into the upstream grid.
Produce or purchase?
The plant’s operations are designed for maximum efficiency. According to Christian Holzinger, Head of Process Control and Instrumentation at InfraServ Wiesbaden, managing such a complex plant structure is far from simple.
Three gas turbines, each with a heat recovery boiler, three steam turbines, and a biomass boiler must all be managed not only for efficiency but also for economic viability,” explains the engineer.
Operations are guided by daily market prices for electricity and gas. “Depending on which option is more cost-efficient, we either generate the energy ourselves or purchase it at favorable prices,” says Holzinger.
Actionable recommendations for operators
The digital core of the facility is ABB Ability™ OPTIMAX®, which provides the real-time data required for efficient operation. Whether electricity, gas, heat, or cooling, this smart energy management system monitors site-wide demand. Clear dashboards give plant operators in the control room all key metrics at a glance, while simultaneously providing recommendations on how to adjust unit output for optimal cost efficiency.
The results speak for themselves: with ABB Ability™ OPTIMAX®, we were able to reduce our energy costs by 1.5 percent within the first six months,” says Holzinger. “Our investment in ABB’s solution paid off within just one year.”
Accurate power forecasts
The ABB system also adds value in meeting mandatory requirements for daily forecasts of power generation and consumption, which Holzinger and his team must submit to the upstream grid operator. “Every deviation, whether positive or negative, is penalized heavily by grid operators,” explains Holzinger. “Previously, collecting and processing data for our more than 70 on-site customers consumed enormous amounts of time and staff resources.” Thanks to ABB Ability™ OPTIMAX®, forecasting is now not only faster but also significantly more accurate.
Forward-looking planning pays off
The digitally connected solution automatically collects all necessary data: How much energy is consumed, where, and over what periods? What do turbine load profiles look like in the required 15-minute intervals? Is it more cost-efficient to purchase power? What are current market prices? Based on this information, the learning system generates forecasts for the following day. If, for example, a turbine unexpectedly goes offline, the forecast is automatically adjusted the same day. As a result, InfraServ Wiesbaden has significantly improved the accuracy of its forecasts with the ABB Ability™ OPTIMAX® algorithm. Between January and August 2023 alone, the company reduced penalty payments by 60 percent for day-ahead forecasts and by 80 percent for intraday forecasts—while also saving about one hour of work per day. These freed-up resources can now be directed toward future projects.
With ABB’s flexible and scalable energy management system, Holzinger is confident that the company is well-prepared for the future – even if generation structures change significantly. “Innovative technologies like ABB Ability™ OPTIMAX® are key to safeguarding the competitiveness of our site,” he concludes. This ensures that the historic Kalle-Albert site will continue to serve as an industrial lifeline for the Wiesbaden region, with infrastructure that is both market- and customer-oriented.
