Einladung_Chapter_Meeting_2018_03_Hilti

The last snow of the winter still visible in the streets the members gathered at the HILTI Academy in Kaufering, close to Augsburg. Josef Obermeier, General Manager at HILTI Kaufering welcomed the Chapter and gave an overview of HILTI. The company still is 100% family owned, the headquarter being in Lichtenstein. Main business are power-tools and fasteners for construction.

Kaufering is the main R&D location, responsible for the electronics and the motors of the power-tools. There even is a special department responsible for the development of chemicals used in fasteners.

After the technical presentations we had a chance to visit the production of drills where there are 2 production lines – medium diameters and the big ones. Each of the lines fully automated.
A special highlight for the members was the training at the HILTI academy. While usually teaching construction teams, the trainer carefully explained the history of tools to the group of engineers. So we all had a chance to experience different of them.

On Friday we visited the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, Prof. Redding and Prof. Finkel. Highlight here was a detailed report about the field test of a local islanding energy grid. Focus of the research is the options we might have to restart local grids when the national grids might have failed. Meanwhile at least in rural environments there ususaly is plenty of PV and even wind turbines power installed in such a grid cell. Even if these sources might be able to supply sufficient energy to such a grid, considering the grid codes of regenerative sources, they are not allowed to.

So a turbine of hydroelectric power station had to be used to start the network. Such a test requires the people living in the village to be on board, which the eagerly volunteered to. During the flied test the local grid cell wsa disconnected from the supply grid and then subsequently restarted by a team of the Lech-Werke using the hydro-plant. Regenerative sources kick in automatically as soon as the frequency is stabilized. To check the robustness a pump at a local water pumping station > 1MW power – was started using the islanding network. A lot of data was recorded and partly is due to be evaluated. Challenge is case of a real emergency would of course be to reduce the manpower for the restart significantly. But at least there is a proof of the islanding capabilities of such local network.