ara region bern ag (arabern) is the largest wastewater treatment plant in the canton of Bern and is one of the most important plants in the country. Every day, 90 million liters of wastewater flow into arabern. Here, the wastewater is cleaned and treated so that it can then be discharged into the River Aare.
The energy exchange between public supply and disposal companies significantly increases energy efficiency and at the same time reduces climate-damaging emissions. The example of the cross-connection between arabern and Energie Wasser Bern (ewb) illustrates this impressively. The "Querverbund arabern - ewb-Energiezentrale Forsthaus" has been in operation since 2013 and is structured as follows: On the one hand, arabern obtains all of its heat and electricity requirements from ewb, and on the other hand, it feeds the entire amount of biogas produced into ewb's natural gas network, processed to natural gas quality (biomethane). The regionally produced biomethane closes the cycle. Households in the Bern region can obtain renewable and CO2-neutral energy produced from their own wastewater. The biomethane is then available for heating, cooking, bus and car travel and electricity production. The heat from the energy center is fed to arabern with process steam via a new long-distance pipeline. The interface between ewb and arabern is a 16-bar steam converter on the arabern site.
Arabern also sees its responsibility in entrepreneurial thinking and action. For this reason, not only the company's own electricity production is important, but also the consumption of electrical energy. Keeping this consumption as low as possible and allocating it to the individual work steps or cost centers has the highest priority.
The federal government's energy strategy and the decision by the Bernese electorate to phase out nuclear energy by 2039 are ambitious goals that arabern is pursuing. These are to be achieved with well thought-out measures.
A comprehensive analysis and the subsequent project planning revealed that the measuring devices used were no longer state of the art. As a result, we installed 71 universal measuring devices, UMG 508/512 from Janitza. Thanks to these high-quality devices, an immediate improvement in measurement accuracy was achieved. The total measured energy consumption only deviated from the external electricity bill by 1 percent.
Our Janitza universal measuring devices enable reliable and comprehensive analysis of grid quality, grid fluctuations, harmonics, flicker and transients. They also measure the kilowatt hours drawn. Oversized power consumption can be prevented and an extraordinary voltage drop can be tracked retrospectively.
Thanks to the installation of the GridVis® visualization software, the electricity grid evaluations can be analysed and visualized centrally on a computer.
Arabern is ready to implement the measures. Together, we have taken a step into the future with the possibilities of measurements and evaluations.
Everything under control! With the newly installed UMG 508/512 devices in combination with the GridVis® software, arabern has an overview of energy consumption at all times. In addition to the consumption of kWh or grid fluctuations, the evaluations programmed to customer requirements are also visible. Large electricity purchases are prevented and energy costs are effectively reduced.
