Projektplanungs- Beratungs- und Entwicklungs GmbH (PBEG), based in Lichtenegg, Lower Austria, has been working on new ideas, strategies and state-of-the-art technology for agricultural businesses and the use of renewable energy sources since 2006. This also includes the management of biogas plants – as part of progressive digitization, the marketing of the balancing energy generated in these plants has been realized. To be successful with its customers on the balancing energy market, PBEG relies on industrial edge technology from Siemens.

“Biogas plants have always been part of PBEG’s field of activity. Since the company was founded, we have focused primarily on the construction and comprehensive support of such systems, from project planning to commissioning and ongoing support,” explains Erich Mandl, Managing Director of the company, that he manages together with Christian Gremel and Johann Handler. 24 employees are available to customers for projects relating to the biogas plants already mentioned and many other topics. The diverse activities also include satellite combined heat and power plants, digestate processing, wood gas for electricity and heat generation, local heating and micro-grids, photovoltaic and food production plants.

“Biogas plants are filled with organically degradable substances, that ultimately produce methane that can be stored temporarily,” explains Christian Gremel. Biogas plants are able to produce a so-called belt load of electricity. The Managing Director thus emphasizes a key difference compared to other renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy: The same amount of electricity is always generated per hour, regardless of the weather. In addition, the electricity production of the biogas plant can be increased or reduced within a few minutes to stabilize the power grid.

This is because the intensive expansion of renewable energy sources also means an additional load on the electricity grid, that can be seen in the fluctuations in grid frequency. Biogas plants can stabilize the electricity grid. This is referred to as positive and negative balancing energy, that can be used to compensate for such fluctuations. “With the technology we offer in collaboration with Siemens, we enable our customers – irrespective the size of the biogas plant – to participate in the balancing energy market. This allows them to create an additional source of income,” says Gremel.

© Siemens

“With the technology we offer in collaboration with Siemens, we enable our customers with biogas plants to participate in the standard energy market. ”

Christian Gremel, Managing Director PBEG

Success with partners

At PBEG, development was pushed ahead: With the Power Pool Manager, that was developed together with partner B-SEC better secure KG, a centralized platform for trading in balancing energy was created. The operators of the biogas plants can announce in advance in the Power Pool Manager when and in which output range the plant is available for a control energy call. The electricity pool manager subsequently enables the balancing energy traders to call up positive or negative balancing energy from biogas plants. The biogas plants relied on Siemens to ensure communication with the electricity pool manager. “In joint discussions, it quickly became clear that industrial edge technology could act as a bridge between the biogas plants from the OT world and our electricity pool manager from the IT world,” summarizes Josef Mandl, responsible for mechatronics and control technology at PBEG.

Martin Feischl, Global Sales Manager for IT/OT integration at Siemens, has been involved in the corresponding pilot project, that comprises several biogas plants in different federal states, since the customer first contacted him. “Control systems are usually in operation for 20 to 30 years. This means that the automation technology installed in the biogas plants managed by PBEG can be classified as very heterogeneous,” says the Global Sales Manager, adding: “We use Siemens Industrial Edge technology to bring the control systems, that can potentially all differ in terms of product generation and manufacturer, down to a common denominator.”

“So-called Industrial Edge devices can connect to almost all control systems and obtain data from them. These can then be displayed in a dashboard or sent to a server, for example,” explains Ahmet Sert, Sales Specialist Siemens Industrial Edge. All you need to do is install a piece of hardware. In the case of the partnership between PBEG and Siemens, the industrial edge devices installed in the biogas plants ensure communication between the controllers and the higher-level system – the power pool manager from PBEG – by means of a small containerized app.

“The participating operators log into this digital management tool and use 4-hour units to indicate when and to what extent their biogas plants are available,” says Josef Mandl. He explains: “Austrian Power Grid (APG) keeps the electricity grid at a constant 50 Hertz using positive and negative balancing energy, thus protecting it from fluctuations and outages. Biogas plants can make a significant contribution to this, as they can temporarily store methane gas and use it to generate electricity on demand at short notice.” This allows APG – based on the offer in the electricity pool manager – to increase or reduce the available output of the biogas plants via balancing energy traders. “Biogas plants are part of the secondary reserve and make a significant contribution to the security of supply and stability of our grid,” summarizes Mandl.

© Siemens

“Biogas plants are part of the secondary reserve and make a significant contribution to the security of supply and stability of our network. ”

Josef Mandl, responsible for mechatronics and control technology, PBEG

Industrial Edge in action

The industrial edge devices at the transition from the IT to the OT world are responsible for collecting the data, such as the current generator output or the potential amount of energy that can be generated, and for the subsequent display in the power pool manager. In the opposite direction – i.e. from the electricity pool manager to the biogas plants – they allow the output of the combined heat and power plants, the technical units of the biogas plants, to be reduced or increased. This bidirectional data exchange is possible because of the application running on the industrial edge device. Due to the locations of the biogas plants in the various federal states and the associated geographical distances, the remote access features offered by Industrial Edge technology are also a great advantage.

“To connect a biogas plant to the power pool manager, we only need to have an industrial edge device installed on site at the biogas plant,” explains Josef Mandl, “We can roll out software updates via the industrial edge management system, that recognizes all connected industrial edge devices and establishes remote connections to the devices.” With the combination of industrial edge technology, industrial edge management system and the electricity pool manager, the conclusion is that biogas plant operators can participate in the balancing energy market quickly and easily with minimal hardware and without major effort or technical challenges.

Following the successful completion of the pilot project, further biogas plants are to be connected to the electricity pool manager via industrial edge technology. Marc Fischer from the Siemens Factory Automation business unit is already looking forward to the first scheduled expansion: “Our Industrial Edge offering is characterized by broad connectivity options in automation as well as data processing and management apps. Central management, app deployment and updating are also part of the Industrial Edge philosophy and enable remote configuration and updating.”

With regard to the integration of further biogas plants, he emphasizes: “Our Industrial Edge technology is scalable and can be adapted to suit the scope. Depending on requirements, the existing infrastructure can also be used to implement other applications, such as anomaly detection or energy monitoring.” Josef Mandl concludes that biogas plants are gaining a whole new dimension in terms of the energy transition and energy mix with the use of industrial edge technology and the resulting participation in the balancing energy market via PBEG’s electricity pool manager.