Delta's Smart Energy-saving Solutions Benefit the Textile Industry, Enhancing Cross-factory Energy Management

Today there is a wide variety of materials available to make fabrics, including cotton, wool, silk, linen, and artificial fibers. Climate and farmland usually affect the natural fiber yield and therefore the world production of artificial fibers is much larger than that of natural fibers. Take Taiwan for example, artificial fibers comprise 85% of production due to insufficient natural fibers.

Textile manufacturing processes require a number of machines, such as air compressors, fans, freezers, cooling towers, and dyeing machines, which consume a large amount of electricity. A dyeing machine, for example, is heated with steam and cooled down with cold water, and thus there is plenty of room for reducing energy consumption and cost.

Recently Delta tailor-made a smart energy-saving solution for a textile manufacturer in Taiwan. The textile manufacturer had designed and built 45 cooling towers to run at 100% full capacity, but there was only a small annual percentage of full-load hours. The cooling fans also ran at full speed 24/7 and this resulted in unnecessary energy consumption when the environmental temperature and relative humidity were low.

Delta installed several power meters in the textile factory to accurately measure electricity consumption. To optimize energy and system operation efficiency in the factory, Delta controlled the cooling towers and fans flexibly with a programmable logical controller (PLC) and motor drives according to the ambient environment during production processes.

The key components applied in the textile factory are all designed and made by Delta for seamless integration and smooth operation. The power meters DPM Series can acquire electricity consumption data and this data is transmitted to the DIAView SCADA System for analysis and visualization. The factory manager can view the statistical analyses on a computer remotely and ask operators to adjust equipment scheduling on the Human Machine Interface DOP-100 Series. The factory manager can also monitor the ambient temperature and cooling fans in multiple factories such as a weaving mill and a dyeing and finishing factory, and keep track of cooling water temperature during the dyeing process. If it is necessary to manage the energy consumption among more systems and across various factories, the Industrial Energy Management System DIAEnergie can enhance energy efficiency with excellent data analysis.

Delta provides the following benefits of the energy-saving solution and smart products for the textile factory:

• Dual-speed motors for cooling towers and variable air volume design for fans
To improve the drawbacks of single-operation cooling towers, Delta uses dual-speed motors in the textile factory. The cooling towers can operate at high speed in summer and at low speed in winter to save more electricity. Delta also controls fan motors with the Hot Swappable Mid-range PLC AH500 Series and the Vector Control Drive C2000 Series to generate variable air volume.

• Smart temperature control
With the power meters installed and the Hot Swappable Mid-range PLC AH500 Series, Delta implements smart group control of the ambient and cooling water temperatures for the textile manufacturer, and operates the air compressors, freezers or other equipment with minimum power in the weaving mill, dyeing factory and more.

• Energy consumption analytics and data visualization for cross-factory management
All the factory environment data acquired by the Power Meter DPM Series is quickly transmitted to the DIAView SCADA System for analysis via the Ethernet Switches DVS Series. The DIAView SCADA System visualizes all the data by presenting various charts and statistical reports for the factory manager to monitor multiple textile and fiber factories in real time.
Delta's smart energy-saving solution can flexibly adjust equipment operation by acquiring, analyzing, and visualizing factory environment data for better system and energy efficiency. If the solution is implemented with the Industrial Energy Management System DIAEnergie, energy consumption can be dealt across more systems during the production processes to enhance cross-factory energy efficiency.