A new shopping centre, StadtGalerie, has boosted the appeal of the city centre in Witten in the Ruhr region of Germany since autumn 2009. Vacon, in cooperation with Borken-based Josef Rehms GmbH, ensures that customers are able to shop in a comfortable environment throughout both summer and winter.

1. Reference Story
enjoyable shopping
at stadtgalerie in witten
Innovative, energy-efficient control technology for building automation
A new shopping centre, StadtGalerie, has boosted the appeal BACnet/IP based on Ethernet. No additional equipment is
of the city centre in Witten in the Ruhr region of Germany needed for communication with the controller.
since autumn 2009. Vacon, in cooperation with Borken-based
Josef Rehms GmbH, ensures that customers are able to shop In addition, the drive is very simple to set up with its straight-
in a comfortable environment throughout both summer and forward start-up wizard. This asks for the most important
winter. parameters in the local language, allowing the user to set the
parameters for the unit by pressing just a few buttons, after
A pleasant climate plays an important role in creating an en- which it is ready for operation. Help is available in plain text
joyable shopping environment. At the StadtGalerie Witten, the in the graphical keypad for parameters, faults and alarms,
climate is maintained by Josef Rehms GmbH with the help of which is a great benefit during commissioning and mainte-
Vacon – a partnership with a history of 10 years. As supplier nance.
of the building management equipment, Rehms was respon-
sible for carrying out all the work for the building technical All the necessary interfaces for the HVAC market are stan-
systems and for installing most of the Vacon AC drives at the dard onboard the Vacon 100 HVAC. As well as the BACnet IP,
Witten StadtGalerie. it also has Modbus TCP based on Ethernet. BACnet MSTP, N2
and Modbus RTU communication interfaces are also avail-
The new Vacon 100 HVAC AC drive, designed for heating, ven- able. In addition to the needed analog, digital and relay inputs/
tilation and air conditioning systems, convinced Josef Rehms outputs, there are two other slots, giving extra flexibility.
GmbH that it was the right drive for the job. The Vacon 100
HVAC offers an affordable price/performance ratio for the The Vacon 100 HVAC is designed specifically for the HVAC
Witten shopping centre and, above all, is equipped with all the market thanks to its various built-in HVAC functions. It has
required accessories, IO and communication interfaces for two programmable PID controllers that can be used for ac-
installing and operating the HVAC drives. curate HVAC process control or even to control the process
through external motors. The real-time clock with built-in
calendar functions and sleep mode helps optimize the HVAC
BACnet onboard!
process and provides great potential for energy savings. The
The main reason why Vacon was chosen for the Witten shop- skip frequencies and multi-pump features ensure that the
ping centre is that the Vacon 100 HVAC is equipped with HVAC fan or pump will have a long life.

2. The Vacon 100 HVAC series is available in the power range up
to 160 kW. Drives with 220 V, 400 V and 480 V supply voltages
are available.
Facility manager controls each AC drive separately
via Ethernet
With an integrated Ethernet onboard, each Vacon 100 HVAC
drive has its own IP address. The user can set the param-
eters, control the drive and monitor the HVAC process sig-
nals graphically using a computer installed with Vacon Live
software. Vacon Live can communicate with the Vacon 100
HVAC drives via Ethernet or RS485/USB and can be used for
commissioning the drive and the HVAC process and for main-
tenance and diagnostics.
In normal operation, the drives are controlled through Sie-
mens PX DDC substations. The facility manager can log into
the drive through the Vacon Live software for monitoring,
analysis and diagnostics without disturbing the operation of
the drive. In partnership with Josef Rehms GmbH, Vacon provides
a pleasant climate in the Witten shopping centre. With
its sales area of 11,500 square metres and around 1,000
Tried and tested down to the smallest detail
square metres of restaurants, on three floors, with two
Jörg Drunkenmölle, Sales Engineer at Vacon GmbH, Vacon’s clothing stores and a two-storey parking facility on top,
subsidiary based in Essen, Germany, is extremely pleased the StadtGalerie has been boosting the appeal of Witten
with how the project has gone: “In the StadtGalerie in Witten, city centre since autumn 2009.
we were able to use nearly all the features of the Vacon 100
HVAC for the very first time. This has been a showcase for the In the Witten shopping centre, the operator can control
unit, demonstrating its power and capabilities, which has put the AC drives and perform diagnostics via Siemens PX
the company in a good light as well.” DDC substations or can access individual units via the
Ethernet.
One of the features mentioned by Mr Drunkenmölle is the
fire mode, which has been developed to assist in emergen-
cies and help save lives in case of a fire hazard. “For example,
when a smoke detector sends an alarm, this activates the fire
mode and the drive runs at a pre-defined speed to remove
smoke from the building, ignoring faults and warnings, so
that people can leave the building safely,” explains Mr Drunk-
enmölle.
Bernhard Lukas, head of measuring and control systems and
electrics at Josef Rehms GmbH, also gives a satisfied report
for the project: “Thanks to the use of BACnet technology in
the Vacon AC drives, we were able to achieve much greater
savings in this project than had been possible with conven-
tional solutions.”
The Vacon 100 HVAC has an integrated BACnet system,
For the customers in the Witten shopping centre, this suc- so there are no additional communication costs. Since
cessful partnership means one thing above all: a relaxed, each of the AC drives in the Witten StadtGalerie can be
safe shopping experience in a pleasant climate. controlled separately, this sharply reduces the amount of
energy needed to operate the shopping centre.
Vacon Group
Runsorintie 7, 65380 Vaasa, Finland
RS000139A
Tel. +358 (0)201 2121
Fax +358 (0)201 212 205
www.vacon.com
info@vacon.com