USA Store About L&R Products Science Career Education DAS MAGAZIN / 11 JUNE Photovoltaic Boost at L&R In May 2021, the third photovoltaic plant at L&R went into operation and was connected to the grid. "das magazin" spoke to Karl-Heinz Posch (Director of the “Technology & Process Engineering” Division) about the background and further plans. Karl-Heinz Posch is Director of L&R's Technology & Process Engineering Division and overall project manager for photovoltaic measures at L&R. Mr Posch, after the photovoltaic plants at the L&R logistics centre in Schönau an der Triesting (Austria) and at the production site in Abreu e Lima (Brazil), light has also been converted into electricity on the roof of the office building in Vienna since the end of May. Why is this? The issue of sustainability is a real concern for us at L&R. We do not only want to make our contribution to reducing the ecological footprint - we do it. This commitment and its implementation exist at all levels at L&R - among the owners, the advisory board, the executive board, all colleagues. It starts with the small things - less printing in the office, installation of LED lamps - and goes all the way to the big areas, such as electricity generation. For years, we have been looking at the best and most efficient ways to save CO2 and have already received several awards for this in recent years. In the future, we see possibilities via thermal power plants on the one hand and electricity generation via photovoltaic systems on the other. Let's talk about the photovoltaic plant at the L&R site in Vienna. How much electricity can be generated, how many emissions reduced? The 120 kWp* system generates about 121,200 kWh of electricity per year, more than 90,000 kWh of these are consumed at the site itself. The rest (25%) is produced at times when L&R cannot consume it completely. We feed this electricity into the general power grid, i.e. we sell it. This measn for our eco-balance_ we save** 31.2 tonnes of CO2 per year in Vienna. And does the investment in a photovoltaic system pay off in the medium to long term? The installation costs should certainly not be underestimated. Of course, the installation costs of about EUR 125,000 are not low at first glance. But with the new plant on the office building in Vienna, we can now "self-produce" more than 58% of the electricity we need. In addition to the nice advantages of this climate-neutral electricity generation – I hereby mean the reduction of CO2 and the sustainable use of resources – this of course also brings a considerable saving of electricity costs and a certain independence from future electricity price developments. A nice side effect. We have read that at the site in Abreu e Lima even 930,000 kWh of electricity are produced per year. How much electricity is generated today at L&R via the photovoltaic system, based on June 2021 and calculated for a whole year? Summing up Schönau, Abreu e Lima and Vienna we produce 1,251,200 kWh of electricity per year. Quite impressive, in my opinion! To put it in more tangible or vivid terms: An A+ refrigerator consumes 119 kWh of electricity per year. This means that we can operate about 1,000 class A+ refrigerators with the electricity we produce. Vienna is the third L&R site with a photovoltaic system. What else is coming? In terms of photovoltaics, we can really speak of a boost. At our site in Schönau an der Triesting (Austria) at our production building, a 300,000kWh system will soon go into operation. The next photovoltaic installation is then planned in Neuwied (Germany), and an installation is also being analysed at our Czech sites in Slavkov and Nova Paka and our Chinese site in Xishui. We are convinced that we will be able to generate electricity from light at a total of 8 L&R sites within the next 2 years - with a total capacity of 3.4 million kWh of electricity! Thank you for the interview! * Kilowatt peak (kWp) is the measurement unit of the output of a photovoltaic system. ** Calculation according to CO2 calculator from the Federal Environment Agency Austria: https://secure.umweltbundesamt.at/co2mon/co2mon.html 3 People like this Give feedback on article SitemapContactPrivacyDisclaimerAboutSymbols Glossary L&R Group L&R USA INC.