Yearly Archives: 2020

Phoenix Contact stands up to the Corona trend – Digital press conference on the occasion of SPS connect

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At Phoenix Contact’s annual press conference in November, Ulrich Leidecker, Chief Operation Officer, spoke about the company’s economic development, which will be better than could be expected at the beginning of the pandemic.

Ulrich Leidecker

From today’s perspective, Phoenix Contact will close the financial year 2020 with a moderate sales decline of -4 to -5 percent. Excluding currency impacts, the rate will be around -3 to -4 percent. That is a very good figure for this industry. From a global perspective, we are experiencing an uneven level. The Americas are in the double-digit minus range, while Asia has been developing very positively since September with an increase in incoming orders. China is showing a sales growth of over ten percent, and the growth curve in the USA is also slowly rising again.

We continued to make significant investments even in 2020, the year of the coronavirus. A total of around 150 million euros will be invested in new structures and innovations. In Nanjing, China, a building complex at a second location near the airport is nearing completion. About ten kilometers away, a new production building with its own logistics facilities of around 34,000 m² of floor space has been built in Mozhou, Nanjing’s newly developed industrial area. A housing complex for employees was also built. Together with a company restaurant, this adds an additional 7,750 m². Phoenix Contact has also invested in Russia and is now part of Europe’s largest technology park in Skolkovo, with 2.6 million m² of space. Here, industrial companies, research laboratories, start-ups, and a university offer a unique high-tech combination.

At the Blomberg site, the logistics unit was expanded while operations continued. Nine additional shelving aisles now offer 64,000 new storage spaces. The additional workstations will increase order picking performance by up to 40 percent. The investment amounts to 15 million euros.

With an investment of 6 million euros, the new logistics building in Herrenberg was completed in the first quarter of 2020. At 2,900 m², the new facilities provide an automated small parts warehouse (AKL) and a pallet rack warehouse. The relocation of the warehouse allows production to be expanded into the space previously occupied by logistics. Phoenix Contact E-Mobility has also further expanded its production capacities. In Germany, a new production area of 5000 m² is being occupied. In addition, a new production plant with an area of 15,000 m² is being built in Poland. Corporate spending on research and development is more than seven percent and has continued to increase slightly compared to 2019. The number of employees worldwide will be around 17,500 in 2020, unchanged from 2019.

Empowering an All Electric Society

All Electric Society - Phoenix Contact

The described activities in all company divisions all serve the goal of making Phoenix Contact an essential partner in a challenging future. We tie our future as a company to the global prospect of sustainable energy production. Climate change, reducing the levels of CO2, the growing world population, and a predicted doubling of the world’s energy demands by 2050 ‒ to meet these challenges, doing without and refraining from things are not enough. New technological approaches are needed. We believe that the world is indeed facing an energy revolution that will usher in the end of the fossil fuel age: A society whose entire energy demands are covered by electricity generated from renewable sources, a completely CO2-free energy supply. This vision has the potential of eliminating the unavailability of energy as one of the world’s most important barriers to economic development, without destroying our natural resources in this endeavor. For years, we have been supporting our customers in areas such as energy efficiency or furthering renewable power generation systems by expanding them and connecting them to the grid. In factory automation and infrastructure, we help with the electrification, networking, and automation of essential structural and production-related elements. We need to expand these efforts greatly in the coming years if the vision of a world powered by a renewable energy supply is to become reality. Additional important aspects will arise, though:

One of the decisive factors will be what is known as sector coupling. We must ensure that the network combines all the energy-generating, consuming, and storing sectors of industry and business as well as of private households and municipal areas. Surplus energy must be stored. This means through conventional means or, in the future, through more “Power-to-X” applications in which hydrogen is produced and stored by means of electrical energy through water electrolysis, which can be converted back into heat or electrical energy by fuel cells or traditional generators when energy requirements increase. In the same way, the hydrogen could be further processed into “green fuels” to serve as regenerative fuel for aircraft. Networked solutions help to bring surplus energy generated at one location to the places where it is currently needed. And this is exactly where we see our contribution as a company. With our solutions, we can contribute to solving major global and social problems and, at the same time, participate in economic development.

Mechanical products such as terminal blocks form the basis for the electrification of industries – the starting point of Phoenix Contact’s corporate development. Thanks to digital item descriptions, these terminal blocks can be efficiently integrated into planning and engineering tools. This is one of the basic prerequisites for the digitization and automation of systems. This is how terminal blocks also make the industries smart.

New communication technologies such as 5G, SPE, and TSN form the basis for the intelligent networking of industries. Using these technologies is the only way to ensure that data points in various sectors can be networked securely, simply, and quickly. We develop all these technologies further and apply them.

Phoenix Contact’s vertical market management aims at developing applications and using them to benefit an All Electric Society. It also benefits factory automation, where the long formulated demand for Industry 4.0 has been described in principle, but is far from being used in daily industrial operations. In the vast infrastructure segment, ranging from smart buildings to smart cities and all forms of smart traffic, there is still a long way to go. This is especially true for sector coupling, which describes how forms of energy can be exchanged efficiently and combined among the individual sectors. Examples range from simple ones, such as combining solar power and electric storage or electrically powered vehicles, up to power-to-gas offshore platforms that convert wind power into hydrogen on site and distribute the energy via pipeline or store it as liquefied gas. This brings us to a rapidly changing world of process technology. In addition to efficiency and modularization issues in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals sector, the oil & gas sector will certainly see the most significant changes. The major oil companies have long understood this and are resolutely moving to alternative strategies for producing and distributing energy. There is also a high demand for electrification, networking, and automation for completely new applications in this sector. This also applies to the energy sector, of course. A changing energy production also needs new structures and processes for distributing and storing energy. Today’s networks are designed so that energy is generated at comparatively few points (power stations), fed into the transport network at high and extra-high voltage, converted to medium voltage, and then distributed further in the distribution grid. After the energy is further converted to low voltage, the actual consumers are supplied by secondary substations. But what if more and more consumers also become producers? What if more and more wind parks and solar parks feed in at the medium-voltage level, where until now energy was “just” distributed? In short, the demands for expanding the energy network will be great and Phoenix Contact will lend support with an ever-growing range of services and applications as a solution partner.

For more information, please visit our website.

Global prosperity through an All Electric Society

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To keep up with today’s world’s needs, we need to adapt to constantly changing needs and offer the best solutions that meet those needs. Today’s world is full of challenges that also offer new opportunities.

Phoenix Contact’s vision is to become a reason and part of a sustainable and climate-friendly future.

The All Electric Society

The All Electric Society is a concept based on research findings from scientists and engineers from universities, institutions and companies all over the world. In a joint video keynote, CEO Frank Stührenberg and CTO Roland Bent explained what lies behind it with a look back into the past of why Phoenix Contact is the ideal partner for this journey into the future. “The success of Phoenix Contact is based on the fact that we have always provided suitable answers to the questions of the time with our technical expertise. The basis of Phoenix Contact’s decades of growth into a technology leader on the world market is our ability to pick up on technological trends innovatively and quickly”, explained Ronald Bent.

New decade target

The All Electric Society describes a future in which clean electricity is available everywhere at ever lower prices and becomes the core of the energy supply. Through an energy system that is cross-sectoral and based on electricity generated from renewable sources. The All Electric Society’s vision is based on a CO2-neutral future and the implementation of this vision relies on the intelligent coupling of all sectors participating in the energy cycle. Electrification, digitalization, and automation are the keys to this coupling.

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Digital transformation and the All Electric Society

Via an approach knows as sector coupling, energy will not only be usable in the form of electricity but will also be used in existing infrastructures and technologies like gas pipelines, gas storage facilities, combined heat and power generation, and filling stations. Through the Power-to-X technology, the basis of the energy mix of the future will be hydrogen. To create smart sectors, comprehensive electrification, digitalization, and automation of all areas is needed. Solutions have to be economical and cost efficient though means of energy efficiency and by optimizing the energy and data-related couplings and balancing all energy consumers, generators and potential storage options in the best way possible.

The future concerns us all

In order to create energy efficiency in the consumption and generation of carbon-neutral energy, we must network all sectors participating in the energy cycle, so that they can communicate with each other. Digitalization plays a decisive role here, because without the generation and processing of digital data, this intelligent networking, the so-called sector coupling, will not be possible. This is why we refer to the digital transformation as one of the enablers that makes the All Electric Society possible. 

Join us in introducing new ideas of how we can together bring our successful economic operations into a new dimension.

For more information, please visit www.phoenixcontact.com/all-electric-society

Technology Days: international digital conference on Single Pair Ethernet

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Technology days

On September 22 and 23, the SPE System Alliance hosts an international, digital exchange of knowledge between experts of different industries and technology sectors on the topic of Single Pair Ethernet. The Technology Days, taking place for the first time this year, provide participants with the opportunity to talk to specialists and to inform themselves about the added value of this communication technology. A keynote, discussions, and an exhibition constitute the framework of this digital conference. Partners of the SPE System Alliance, like Dätwyler, Fluke Networks, Kyland, Microchip, Phoenix Contact, Prysmian Group, R&M, Rosenberger, Sick, Telegärtner and Weidmüller, will point out trends within SPE technology and explain the relevance for components like switches, semiconductors, sensors, connectors, and cables.

The program will take place at different times on both days so that everyone around the world who is interested in the Technology Days can visit them virtually. The conference will be held in English. If you want to register for the digital conference on September 22 and 23, 2020, please follow this link www.singlepairethernet.com/TechnologyDays. The program can be found here as well. The exhibition will be open for all participants until October 2, 2020.

About the SPE System Alliance The SPE System Alliance is an association of leading technology companies from different industries and fields of application who bundle and exchange their expertise regarding Single Pair Ethernet. All partners thus pursue the common goal of promoting the SPE technology for the IIoT and every other field of application. For more information on the SPE System Alliance, visit www.singlepairethernet.com

Phoenix Contact, Quectel and Ericsson jointly develop the first industrial 5G router for private networks

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Phoenix Contact, Quectel and Ericsson have worked together to develop and deploy the first industrial 5G router for local industrial applications in a private 5G network.

With the help of the newly developed 5G Router, industrial applications, such as machines, controls and other equipment, can now be connected to a private 5G network and thus be orchestrated in their resource usage, priority and behavior. They therefore offer a decisive advantage compared to previous mobile radio solutions, which can only use all – mostly license-free – radio bands with a best effort principle and which have to accept performance losses in equal measure when the radio spectrum is heavily occupied.

5G Handshake

To achieve this, all three companies brought their strengths together: Phoenix Contact as the first choice supplier of WLAN, Bluetooth and mobile radio routers for industrial applications, Quectel as the leading global supplier of cellular and GNSS modules and Ericsson supporting the product development as a network supplier and a leading force of the 5G technology development. By starting to interact at an early stage, the three companies have been able to rapidly develop a solution that provides industrial-grade performance over private 5G networks. The collaboration between Quectel, Phoenix Contact and Ericsson has seen extensive interoperability testing at the Ericsson lab to ensure the reliable commercial performance of the 5G router. The experience made is highly important for Ericsson following the strategic approach offering 5G solutions jointly with mobile network operators towards the industry. In addition, all three companies cooperated closely to enable Industry 4.0 applications with this 5G standalone private network. 

To learn more about the different Industrial Communication Standards, please visit the website.

Unmanaged Ethernet Switches Reinvented

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Unmanaged Switches from Phoenix Contact enable easy Industrial Ethernet communication. The industrial-grade IP20 and IP67 switches feature variable numbers of ports, various designs, and additional functions such as Power over Ethernet (PoE).

Unmanaged Switches
SFNB unmanaged switches

The SFNB series Unmanaged Switches represent the entry-level solution in our portfolio of Ethernet switches. These switches are particularly suitable for very simple automation applications where there are no exacting demands on the temperature range, data throughput or functions.

Phoenix Contact’s new generation of unmanaged ethernet switches from FL Switch 1000 series offer a narrower housing, greater port density, and best-in-class automation protocol traffic prioritization. The first five variants of the refreshed portfolio are exclusively copper ports, with fiber optic models soon to follow later this year.

unmanaged switches

Both gigabit and fast ethernet models will be included in the initial roll-out, enabling applications of different bandwidths in a variety of industries. With the help of a unique mounting accessory, the FL Switch 1000 series can also be mounted flat on the DIN rail, enabling use in small or flat cabinets with little space. Thanks to Energy Efficient Ethernet, these switches will also feature a reduced power consumption, which will lessen heat and the overall footprint of the device.

More information about the wide range of industrial Ethernet and other products is available on the website.

Shield clamps for one-handed tool-free operation

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The new SCC shield clamps from Phoenix Contact make one-handed, tool-free operation possible. The space-saving series features spring clamp technology that offers a mechanically large contact surface and a secure closure system for high-level shield attenuation.

SCC shield clamps

The contact spring provides reliable contact quality with long-term stability. In addition, it compensates for any conductor settling effects.

You may conveniently open and close the shield clamp with the integrated clamping lever. Conductors can be inserted into the terminal without force and automatically centered due to the shape of the contact spring. Actuating the clamping lever causes the contact spring to effortlessly clamp the conductor in place. Handling is safe and error-free, because the contact spring is not pre-tensioned.

Corrosion, contact zone, ferrule

You can use shield clamps in the clamping range of 5 mm to 20 mm. Corrosion protection is assured even under harsh operating conditions. There are three mounting types available for time-saving and vibration-resistant mounting: Snapping into place on the neutral conductor busbar, direct mounting, and DIN rail mounting. Suitable marking materials are also available for clear marking.

Your advantages

  • Convenient connection and latching with just one hand
  • Safe and error-free handling, as the contact spring is not pretensioned
  • The contact spring guarantees a reliable contact quality with long-term stability
  • The spring compensates any conductor settling effects
  • Optimum shield attenuation due to the large contact facing of the braided shield on the discharge potential

Main features

  • Four clamp versions
  • Three mounting types
  • Clamping range: 5 mm … 20 mm
  • Vibration-resistant
  • Corrosion protection under harsh operating conditions
  • Marking option
  • Extremely low contact resistance

Visit the website to find similar grounding and shielding material.

Safe power supplies in the process industry

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Certification, redundancy, and functional safety

The Quint Power Plus version of power supplies are ideal for applications that place extreme demands on availability and safety. All types of faults regarding system availability are monitored by the functions included with the Plus version. Thanks to the combination of integrated redundancy, double OVP, and SIL 3 approval, plus the protective coating and ATEX/IECEx approval, Quint Power sets new standards for safe supply in the process industry.

System availability, power plant

In addition to high system availability, users of the Plus version also benefit from space and cost savings thanks to the simplified layout in the control cabinet. There is no need for additional external modules either, with the reduced wiring effort providing further cost savings.

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Intelligent pump automation: Wastewater treatment

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Written by Pradeep Menon – Business Development Manager – Energy and Infrastructure at PHOENIX CONTACT Middle East

Reliable solutions for wastewater treatment: Pump automation technology with PumpControl

Water pipes are required almost everywhere, especially for water and wastewater distribution. There are several types of water pipes in well-built and constructed water distribution networks, including large diameter main pipes, which supply entire cities, smaller branch lines supplying a street or group of buildings, or small diameter pipes within individual buildings.

Installation of efficient and reliable methods for wastewater treatment plants is one of the main challenges of our time

Wastewater treatment plants are supplied with wastewater from sewer systems. These sewer systems can be extended for many Kilometers via pipe distribution networks so that the wastewater can pumped into the treatment plant. There are several pumping stations with installed pumps that aids the flow to move in the right direction. Every single pump has to have a control system, to ensure operational reliability.

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HMIs are developed using PLCnext Engineer

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Written by Pradeep Menon – Business Development Manager – Energy and Infrastructure at PHOENIX CONTACT Middle East

PLCnext Engineer

HMI devices can now be developed using a PLC programming software called PLCnext Engineer (a free of charge software) and stored on the PLC. It allows users to utilize popular programming environments to have real-time control with advanced computation. Customers have the possibility to use any HMI from other suppliers or a laptop, a tablet or all of these at once.

In the scenario when any of these HMI hardware devices break, you can simply swap it with a new one. You only need to browse the IP address of the PLC and your new HMI is up and running. This is because the HMI programming pages are stored on the PLC.

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Phoenix Contact – on the journey to a smart world

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In 3 DAYS ONLY, Phoenix Contact will showcase new innovations at the Middle East Energy 2020.

Phoenix Contact at Middle East Energy 2020
Digital Transformation at Phoenix Contact

Visit our booth H6.A10

Phoenix Contact at Middle East Energy 2020

Phoenix Contact Middle East will be participating at the upcoming Middle East Energy Exhibition (formerly known as Middle East Electricity), the global energy platform from 3rd to 5th March, 2020 everyday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Our stand will be located at booth number 6A10 in hall number 6 at Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai – United Arab Emirates.

Shaping the energy industry’s future together

As a global market leader with almost 100 years of experience in the energy industry, the Middle East Energy is a platform that allows us to meet with our partners and customers, and network with other manufacturers within this industry. The event also provides us with the opportunity to reveal products and solutions for power generation as well as power transmission and distribution for the Energy and Infrastructure industries within the region. We have been regularly participating at this event for several years as it remains to be the region’s leading trade event for the power industry.

Product Highlights

Our innovative products and solutions are characterized by high quality within the various industrial fields of electric-mobility, mechanical engineering, wind energy, solar energy, building automation, cyber security, automotive, …etc. This year, Phoenix Contact’s booth is dedicated to “Creative solutions for a smart world”. We will highlight the “Complete line” which is a system comprising technologically leading and coordinated hardware and software products, consulting services, and system solutions. Phoenix Contact now supplies a complete solution to optimize all the processes during control cabinet manufacturing.

Innovations at the booth

Other new innovations will be showcased at our booth by our product experts. Some of these innovations are products and solutions for industrial buildings, infrastructure, process, and tunnel technology, surge protection for power supplies and signals, PLCnext technology, marking and tools for efficient control cabinet wiring, relays for the best switching, industrial wireless, cloud-based remote communication, power supplies leading in technology and intelligent UPS for superior availability.

We encourage customers to engage with us physically at the booth, but also digitally through the various digital channels. Learn more