One container—a triple amount of energy
The Hübner EnergyContainer® supplies energy over a long period to rescue teams or construction teams.
Far away from electrical grids, e.g. during rescue operations in disaster areas, the energy supply represents a big challenge. How can military hospitals get energy, how can water be heated in order to destroy germs or to heat food, what powers the devices? Also at building sites with impassable terrain or at remote satelite stations energy is a luxury good. And appropriately expensive: until today they have mostly used diesel generators for the energy supply. But the transport of the fuel to the site represents a big expenditure. When you also consider the costs for logistics and safety, the price for one liter diesel can increase to an inestimable amount.
The company Johannes Hübner GmbH from Gießen/Germany discovered a big market potential. The world market leader for rotary pulse generators for the heavy industry developed a system which relieves the generator due to 2 additional renewable energy sources. A solar plant as well as a wind turbine deliver the basic supply and feed 24 rechargeable batteries. The generator only operates in case of a specially high need of energy or in case of a lack of sun and/or wind. A special management system uses all resources in an optimum way thus saving valuable fuel. Depending on the operation area you can receive energy for one year-without maintenance, without refueling, without any electrical grid.
The clou: in order to reach any place on earth in a fast an secure way the whole system was supposed to be installed in a 20-feet-container. It was the task of IHNEN AURICH to develop such a container. The mechanical engineer Jan Eeten had 2 to 3 weeks time to design and manufacture the Hübner EnergyContainer®. “We already had manufactured many module systems for electrotechnical plants at IHNEN AURICH”, says Jan Eeten. “But to develop the EnergyContainer® for the company Hübner with all the additional components and with the standard dimension of a 20-feet-container was a really new challenge”.
Manufacturing precisely according to international standard
The limited space was the biggest obstacle for the planning. For the transport to the site, the solar plant and the wind turbine including the 15 meter long mast which is taken to pieces have to be stowed safely. Whereas during operation, when the solar plant and the wind turbine are installed on the outside of the container, you need sufficient space to move between the 5 diesel tanks and the 24 batteries. Additionally there were some wishes from the technicians. ”There had to be a switch installed here and a wall outlet there”, remembers Jan Eeten. ”But from the beginning on I had left enough space for e.g. a cable drum. And a cable drum was needed exactly at this place.” Still in the container: an exhaust system for the diesel generator, besides there is a special roller system on the ground for the easy loading and unloading of the container. Specially the unwieldy masts can be rolled into the container in an easy way.
Additional stability due to special steel
Challenge number 2: the stability. Normally a container must be able to endure 2 G, i.e. the double gravity. But Johannes Hübner had planned a bigger solidity for his new EnergyContainer®: the HEC should endure 4 G, i.e. a force of a fourfold gravity. This was only possible with a container with special features. In his design, Jan Eeten included a bigger wall thickness as usual, made of S355-steel. Bigger screwed connections and wind bracings (cross bracings) reinforce the frame. In addition there are beadings on the wall which provide an additional stability. The total weight of the EnergyContainer® is about 10 tons.
The IHNEN AURICH team needed about 2 weeks to manufacture a prototype out of the construction drawings-just in time for the HUSUM WindEnergy 2010. Johannes Hübner presented the EnergyContainer® for the first time at the biggest trade fair for wind energy world-wide, where also IHNEN AURICH was represented by a booth. The container with the installed solar plant, the wind turbine and the erected mast impressed the public. Many visitors recognized the saving potential of this “steel case”. Even though the EnergyContainer® has its price. Jan Eeten smiles: “This is not a device for the garden in order to spare the grid connection.”
You can read the complete edition of I-motion 2/2010 with the report about the EnergyContainer® here.