Thursday 2023-03-30

Whether in the office or on the production floor: Nothing works at the industrial company HELLA without energy. However, high energy consumption pollutes the environment and harms the climate, and energy costs have also risen enormously. HELLA is therefore pursuing the goal of reducing its own energy consumption. In 2023, each production site is to consume at least seven percent less electricity and gas. In order to produce more energy-efficiently and to eliminate power guzzlers, teams at all production sites are pursuing different approaches to save energy as part of the Think.Act.Save! initiative. With success: In 2022, 7.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity could be saved worldwide with more than 40 individual measures. This is equivalent to the electricity consumption of 2,200 German 3-person households and corresponds to electricity costs of over 1.1 million Euros.

Production-free? Switch off instead of standby

The savings measures of the Think.Act.Save! initiative systematically target the largest energy consumers. Plant 4 (GE) in Hamm, Germany consumed around 24 gigawatt hours of electricity in 2022, this is equivalent to the energy consumption of 6,700 average German 3-person households. At the top of the list is manufacturing: The production facilities consume 44% of the plant's total electricity consumption during operation. But even when the plants are not producing at all, for example at the weekend, electricity still flows in most HELLA plants. Why? Because until now, the production systems were often only put into stand-by mode instead of being switched off completely. This was done so that the systems can be started up again as quickly and flexibly as possible. In stand-by mode, however, the machines still consume up to 50 percent electricity compared to consumption in operation.

HELLA Xiamen (HED) has managed to completely shut down the plant over the Chinese New Year 2023 period and by this achieved a very good energy saving result: only 4 per cent electricity was consumed compared to normal operation. "Congratulations to the whole HED Operations team! I am proud that with our approach we could create a positive example of how a plant can contribute to running our business sustainably. The prerequisite was precise planning. In the first step, we had to make sure that there really was no production. To this end, we have started early to align together with our customers their demands before and after the holiday period. Furthermore, we have ensured that no construction or maintenance works were scheduled," explains Michael Jarecki, Managing Director HELLA Xiamen. "Secondly, together with the employees, we have followed a detailed plan for switching off equipment and systems. We discussed critically where electricity will continue to flow, for example for emergency lighting, material refrigerators or gluing stations. Production equipment like ovens and injection molding machines as well as facility systems like air compressors and humidifiers were switched off.  Before leaving for the holidays the shopfloor and the management team checked together the consequent implementation of the agreed measures at the end of the production shifts and in dedicated plant walks. Lastly, in order to ensure a smooth ramp-up after the production stop, we assigned a limited amount of personnel to turn on chosen equipment prior to the regular start of production," Jarecki continues. “Hereby we focused on equipment, which needs preparation time to be ready for series production e.g., ovens have to heat up, or which based on complexity or age might cause unforeseen challenges."

Similar initiatives are currently underway at HELLA plants worldwide. Plant 4 in Hamm has also achieved significant success over the production-free period during Christmas 2022, which resulted in 50 percent less electricity consumption than in the same period the year before.

Detect power guzzlers and increase efficiency

As part of the Think.Act.Save! intiative, HELLA locations are systematically looking for approaches to save energy. Here are some examples:

• Compressed air is a real energy guzzler in production, accounting for 15% of electricity consumption at the electronics plant in Hamm. However, there are often leaks in the compressed air lines. A measure of the Think.Act.Save! initiative is to look for leaks and remove them regularly. In 2022, the Ghiroda electronics plant in Romania saved over 200,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and thus electricity costs were reduced by over 44,000 euros thanks to this activity.
• In addition, HELLA is gradually pushing ahead with the changeover to energy-efficient LED lighting in the factory halls. Plant 2 (GL) in Lippstadt, for example, has used almost 450,000 kilowatt hours less electricity with a new lighting concept for the 7,500 square meter Hall C10, and thus saved costs of 94,000 euros.
• Plant 2 in Lippstadt has recently started using energy-efficient turbo vacuum pumps on metallization equipment for the vapour deposition of headlamp components. Compared to the previous diffusion pumps, they only require 1% of the electricity and thus save 23,000 euros in electricity costs per year per system.
• At Plant 4 in Hamm, the humidifiers in Hall B are currently being replaced. The previous system heats water to 100 degrees Celsius to evaporate it and humidify the room with this mist. The new system generates the mist through high pressure instead of heat and thus reduces the power consumption of the humidifiers by 98 percent. The annual savings potential is 660,000 KWh of electricity and costs amounting to 140,000 euros.

All measures have one thing in common: "The employees in production are the experts. They know the machines, have good ideas and implement the approaches in the end. Involving them even more is our goal in the coming weeks," says Sebastian Schubert, Project Manager at HELLA, who is responsible for the coordination of the Think.Act.Save! Initiative. "In this way, the HELLA team will be able to further reduce energy requirements together. Every contribution counts."