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Optimized energy consumption in the Carinthia holiday village Moserhof

The holiday village Moserhof lies in the middle of the marvelous landscape of the Carinthia Möll valley. Nine quaint, fully equipped wooden houses, a small chapel in the village square, a spa cottage with extensive spa area and a pond form the idyllic setting of the holiday paradise on the banks of the River Möll. A premium holiday village for families has arisen here, grown from a farm with a farm house and a stable including a riding school. Despite the comfort the owners Gerhild and Heinz Hartweger set a high value on efficient energy usage. The local specialist for automation engineering Nikolaus Hartweger has implemented a clever energy optimizing system based on VIPA control technology.

Energy control from the tablet PC

The guests in the holiday village live in six solid wooden houses and three historical alpine cabins which, despite the rustic charm, are exclusively equipped for up to eight persons. The bath house with a Finnish sauna, herbal sauna, infrared cabin, panorama relaxation room, fireplace, herbal and tea bar as well as a bathing room for different bathing treatments turns out to be a real spa oasis in the middle of the village. It is obvious that here the energy costs can only be monitored and optimized by a sophisticated controller. In addition, the controller can be managed from the office computer in the farmhouse or via mobile Tablet PCand smart phone. “In my opinion the most important requirement of energy optimization – whether in the area of building or industry – is to control everything from one central processor. Only when all the data of the whole periphery is collected and managed by a common intelligence, is the optimization potential fully realized.”Nikolaus Hartweger said about the basics of his control concept. The fact that the total power consumption has decreased since the energy optimizing system has been implemented shows that it works.

Control concept with centralized 300S and 200V via PROFIBUS

The industrially approved SPEED7 CPU from VIPA 315-2AG12 operates as the control engineering heart of the energy optimizing system. Here the latest energy data of the main power supply of all distributed decentralized I/O stations at Moserhof are connected. All decentralized “VIPA 200V” I/O stations distributed at Moserhof are also connected to the central controller via Profibus. Currently, besides parts of the main house and the central wood chips heater, the stables, the workshop and the bathhouse are connected to the energy optimizing system. One cottage after another is connected in succession. Heating including warm water preparation, air conditioning and the individual sauna stoves and even the electricity sockets in the bathhouse are controlled.
Another special feature of his concept is that Nikolaus Hartweger deploys the battery free remote switches from EnOcean instead of the usual light switch. The EnOcean reception modules can easily be coupled with the VIPA I/O modules.”

The intelligence is in the controller program

Apart from the technical advantages the main reason for the deployment of the VIPA CPU was the possibility of programming the entire application in Siemens STEP7 and the whole application running on the VIPA CPU. The choice of hardware was easy due to many years of experience in PLC programming and the implementation with the fast VIPA SPEED7 CPU. The controller collects all energy values and from this calculates the current total energy consumption. Consumers are specifically disconnected as soon as the value reaches the limit value of the connected power. A priority list which is stored within the program manages the switch off, so that within a 15 minutes interval no load peaks ever occur. In this time interval the energy suppliers determine the consumption peaks and calculates them in case they exceed the specified limits. Of course, an intelligent visualization is also part of the automation solution. Via a touch panel with integrated web server in the control cubicle of the main controller the control can be operated and monitored from the main control station as well as via tablet PC or smart phone. Additionally, the clearly designed visualization not only gives information about the latest energy values but also graphically depicts them.

Even though the owner of Moserhof was initially not a big fan of electronic solutions, he was completely impressed by his cousin's automation concept. Now he is informed with a few mouse clicks at any time and may, if necessary, intervene immediately.

Extract from the article „SPS macht Ferien“ in the Austrian journal Austromatisierung No. 5/2013, Author: Thomas Reznicek