A two day GlassTrend seminar held in Munich last September addressed opportunities to increase efficiencies in glass production via the utilisation of enhanced process automation and big data. Glass Worldwide, preferred journal of GlassTrend, was among those in attendance. The full version of this article appears in the November/December issue *.

Peaks in electricity demand from unmanaged electric heating systems can increase the risk of power outages, especially if these systems are running on emergency power generation. When power is demanded from multiple heating zones at random, it can unpredictably overload the power supply system, causing circuit breakers or gen-sets to trip. In the worst case, unmanaged demand from multiple heating systems can leave glass manufacturing plants operating close to the limit of their main electrical power supply and at risk from a plant-wide power outage. Peak power demands can also affect the measurements used by electricity suppliers to set tariffs and calculate bills resulting in higher electricity costs than necessary. René Meuleman and Amber Watkin explain how using predictive load management strategies in the EPower Advanced SCR power controller help minimise peak power demand through ‘load sharing’ and ‘load shedding’ technology. The full version of this article appears in the November/December issue *.