Successful Energy Efficiency Sector

Numerous Styrian companies are specialised in efficient energy use in the B2B industry, offering web-based innovations, intelligent facades and highly efficient industrial LEDs.

Siemens (www.siemens.com/buildingtechnologies), for example, can save between 30 % and 40 % on costs with its building technology. In addition to its classic range of offers in energy controlling, monitoring, energy and weak point analysis, remote service building performance optimisation is also offered. Through the continuous optimisation of facilities, processes and target values are permanently adapted to the respective building use. The Siemens Advantage Operation Center (AOC) also ensures the planned optimisation measures are successful. Further areas of focus at the technology giant’s Styrian location are modernisation solutions for municipal, government and commercial buildings, which are refinanced from the savings on energy costs.

Energy efficiency concepts in the area of plant engineering are developed by the Styrian firm UTG (www.utg.at), which also carries out the complete technological implementation. “In cooperation with the Kapfenberg-based Lactosan Gmbh, we have optimised hydraulic facilities, generating an annual saving of 100,000 kWh of thermal and at least 97,400 kWh of electrical power, which is equivalent to EUR 25,000. The environmentally relevant savings are about 50 tonnes of CO2 per year,” reports engineer Alexander Slanina, head of energy optimisation and energy efficiency at UTG.

With the establishment of the “Hans Höllwart – Forschungszentrum für integrales Bauwesen AG (FIBAG)” competence centre, the façade specialist SFL (www.sfl-gmbh.at) has provided new momentum in researching the use of energy-saving elements. “For us the classic façade is an instrument of energy management,” says engineer Dr. Mario J. Müller, management board member of FIBAG. “Façades are the interface between the exterior and interior life of a building. Optimal energy efficiency can be achieved with technical installations in this area – for example in the façades themselves or components such as blinds or ventilation or photovoltaic technology integrated in sunshields.” The company’s declared aim is independence from fossil fuel sources on the one hand, and on the other hand constructing buildings in such as way that they produce more energy than they actually need, thereby feeding the surplus into the grid.

The Lumitech Group (www.lumitech.at) affiliated with Graz physicist Günther Leising, founder and co-owner of the spin-off from Graz University of Technology, has been successfully involved in the development of particularly efficient light sources for industrial applications with precise wavelengths. The recent “pitch” is the so-called PI-LED technology, which enables an energy savings of up to 85 % compared to conventional lighting.

A lightbulb went on for Upper Styria native Georg Dietmaier as well. An obsolete solar lighting system in Padua prompted the trained electrician to found the company ecoliGhts (www.ecolights.at), which is specialised in the development, planning and construction of solar lighting facilities which are independent of the grid. Dietmaier’s credo: “We have to get away from oil and gas as energy sources and produce innovative products which are compatible with the environment, create new jobs and keep the added value in our own country.” energy agency eastern styria EAO (www.eao.st) is currently developing a new customised process cooling system for an industrial enterprise. Instead of the previous cooling machine with an output of one megawatt, the company will convert to a centralised cooling system with river water. “This solution generates enormous cost and power savings of EUR 36,000 per year for the enterprise, and does so with a very attractive period of amortisation,” managing director Josef Bärnthaler says.

As a provider of energy services the Graz Energy Agency GEA (www.grazer-ea.at) supports refurbishment projects such as that of residential complex built in 1940. After the refurbishment measures recommended by GEA, the complex will consume 93 % less heat and belong to the energy certificate’s class A+ instead of F as before. Energy in the right form and place guarantees efficiency.

source: ECO WORLD MAGAZINE, issue November 2008, page 8