Hydro Rein Hub: Delivering energy efficiency and reduction through advanced visualization and analytic tools
Hydro’s renewable energy company Hydro Rein has fast-tracked the development of a new digital platform aimed at providing advanced insights into energy consumption.
What will it take for asset-heavy industries to reach net-zero? It’s not just a matter of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. It’s also about driving energy usage down by striving for efficiencies, introducing new technologies and solutions that help optimize all aspects of industrial operations.
“The new platform, named Rein Hub, allow customers to achieve energy efficiency gains, reduce emissions and save costs. Digital technologies are a critical enabler for a widespread switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, together with improved energy efficiency across the industrial sector,” says Nicholas Martin, Head of Energy Solutions in Hydro Rein.
Hydro Rein was established in 2021 as part of Hydro’s strategy to grow in renewables. The company aims at becoming the preferred supplier of renewable power and other energy solutions for industrial clients. Hydro Rein has put in place a significant pipeline of wind and solar project leads for long-term power supply to Hydro’s plants and other customers.
The new Rein Hub platform represents a centralized ‘hub’ for industrial customers that brings together a range of visualization and energy optimization tools for industrial players in a single, easy to use digital platform.
Through close collaboration with Hydro Extrusions Sweden and external technology partner Cognite, Hydro Rein’s Energy Solutions team has rapidly developed an initial suite of tools within Rein Hub, responding to some of the most pressing energy demands of the pilot plants.
Video: How Hydro Rein and Cognite have joined forces to accelerate the energy transition:
“Our goal is to become a net-zero company, with net-zero products. To achieve this, we need more data, more transparency, and more visualization. This assures us that we put our efforts where they matter the most,” says Jonas Bjuhr, Managing Director at Hydro Extrusions Sweden.
The initial set of digital tools which is now ready to deploy under the Hydro Rein Hub platform includes the following:
- Live Energy Dashboard: a visualization tool that allows users to see energy consumption data in near real-time, broken down by plant / process / piece of equipment.
- Compressed Air Dashboard: a diagnostic tool that identifies compressed air leaks (pinpointing the time and physical location of the leak) and calculates the volume of CO2 and financial cost of the leak, based on live energy market data. Given Hydro consumes more than 500 GWh of electricity each year on compressed air, this tool has the potential to deliver significant cost savings and energy reductions within the Hydro portfolio.
- Greenhouse Gas Emission Tracker: a visualization tool that tracks GHG emissions and energy consumption from sites in near real-time. Customers can select any time period of interest and drill into emissions from specific processes, pieces of equipment and even trace GHG emissions down to product level.
“These tools will also enable automated reporting of all data processed within Rein Hub, reducing the time spent collating this information and improving the transparency and consistency of reporting,” Nicholas Martin says.
The Rein Hub will also include the brain for operating energy storage systems (ESS) such as batteries, solar, wind and other DER’s (Deregulated Energy Resources). In this way, the platform will play a key role in ensuring that customers get the most out of these assets both from a financial and technical point of view – through initiatives such as lowering grid bottlenecks, providing resilient power and accessing price mechanisms to lower the overall energy price at site.
Pilot plants in the project have included Hydro Extrusion’s plants at Vetlanda in Sweden and Magnor in Norway, together with external companies Hydal and Unger. Throughout the initial 6-month period of this project, Hydro Rein has enjoyed strong support and interest from Hydro plants – as well as a number of potential customers outside Hydro.
Although the platform remains early in its development cycle, pilot customers are already seeing the value it offers and a number of plants have expressed interest in becoming pilot customers.
“Hydro Rein has significant ambitions for the platform and is looking forward to continues to refine the existing tools and develop new functionality – ensuring the system supports customers in making better decisions, raising awareness around energy and emissions, and facilitating improvement initiatives,” Martin says.