Tyrol milk starts a pilot project for sustainable power consumption

Bergland milk has been operating the most sustainable dairy location in Central Europe in Wörgl, under the Tirol Milk brand. In order to continue to be a pioneer here, together with Tiwag (Tyrolean Hydropower AG) and the MCI | The entrepreneurial university® started an innovative pilot project. “We want to shift sustainable business and our electricity consumption into low -emission and favorable times. We use the thermal storage capacity of the cooling bearing,” explains Berglandmilch Managing Director Josef Braunshofer.

The large high -bay warehouse in Wörgl offers space for 6,800 pallets. The annual consumption for cooling, ventilation and ice water cycle was so far 3.5 GWh, i.e. approx. 16 % of the total current consumption. A MCI research team has now programmed a digital twin of the cooling bearing, which enables different temperature scenarios to be played through. The individual products in the model also had to be mapped: A total of 300 different products are produced at the Wörgl location and then stored, which differ in the cooling by various requirements. For example, butter has different thermal properties than milk or yogurt.

“Ensuring product quality always has a top priority,” emphasizes Josef Braunshofer. “However, a temperature range between 3 and 5 ° C can be used very well as a thermal memory.” A corresponding test operation has been running since this winter: the memory duration was up to ten hours a day and mountain land milk was able to move part of the electricity consumption to low -emission and cheaper times.

“The first results of this pilot project are actually very gratifying: With the appropriate sustainability, we will not only be able to control our electricity use much more efficiently in the future, but also reduce the total costs and thus strengthen the location,” says Braunshofer. How exactly the optimization behaves in summer – at high outside temperatures – will only be shown. A saving of up to 20,000 euros per year is currently expected.

In any case, Tiwag board director Thomas Gasser is convinced: “With this innovative project, the project partners have shown that the combination of technical know-how, energy management expertise and digitization can still be raised many hidden potential in the Tyrolean industry. Accordingly, we are already in exchange with many other companies to initiate corresponding projects.”

The mountain land milk location in Wörgl has been using sustainable energy supply for over 10 years and operates its location with biomass instead of fossil natural gas or oil. Heat from production is released into a local heating network and around 1,300 households of the city of Wörgl will be with heat. The milk farmers, who are still the only owners of the mountain milk milk, not only deliver the milk for the Tyrol milk specialties, but also from their forests, the wood also comes for a large part of the energy or steam supply of the dairy, which means that the wood chipping system is operated. In addition, in addition to the locations in Aschbach and Voitsberg, the sustainable reusable glass bottle is bottled here. Thus, symbolically regional economic cycles are closed at the Wörgl location.