21 June 2022
ABB and CERN in new innovation partnership
ABB will collect digital performance data from hundreds of industrial electric motors to help CERN boost the energy efficiency of its critical cooling systems. Photo credit CERN
Learnings and best practices will be shared publicly so that other large-scale cooling and ventilation projects can find new ways to increase energy efficiency.
This project gives ABB access to an enormous testbed and CERN is assisted in developing a sophisticated solution for a complex system. A knowledge transfer project that is a clear win-win.
“The results will be of great benefit for CERN in improving its future energy efficiency, and will generate new knowledge for ABB’s R&D team,” says Fredrik Engelmark, Big Science Sweden and Industrial Liaison Officer for CERN.
“The project grew out of a long period of preparation, during which Big Science Sweden facilitated meetings and created contacts, such as the Discovery Day 2020 where CERN presented the challenges it was facing and ABB was chosen as collaboration partner.
Swedish industry and Big Science
The project is an outstanding example of how Swedish industry can benefit from the big research organisations’ knowledge and data quantities. Large collaborations require first building relations and trust. Here, Big Science Sweden has been the spider in the web, bringing together the key people and helped to driving the process forward.
“Our innovation partnerships help us to enable positive societal impact from our work pushing the limits of science and engineering at CERN,” says Han Dols, CERN’s Head of Business Development & Entrepreneurship.
“We have partnered with ABB to generate insights to help reduce our own electricity footprint, as we continue to test the extremes at such a large facility. We also hope to inspire other Big Science facilities and industry to do the same and, as such, have agreed with ABB to share the learnings of this project publicly.”
Mari E. Haapala is Digital Lead in ABB Motion. “Our partnership with CERN will illustrate what can be achieved with insights from digital energy appraisals and condition monitoring services that enable smarter decision-making for the electrical rotating equipment in a large-scale science facility,” she explains.
“As CERN’s partner, we look forward to helping them on their digital journey to an energy-efficient future.”
Congratulations to ABB!