Siemens has announced its first products that support the new Profienergy profile. The vendor- and device-independent profile, drawn up by Profibus International, is designed to  switch off equipment during production breaks while other components continue to operate – for example, for safety-related tasks. At the end of the break, the loads are then switched on again in a co-ordinated manner.

The profile allows a single controller communicating via Profinet to shut down individual devices or entire sections of a production plant, without needing external hardware.

Siemens’ first Profienergy-supporting products are a power module for its Simatic ET 200S distributed I/O system, and function blocks for its Simatic controllers. The ET 200S PM-E RO power module (shown above) switches off individual inputs and outputs of the I/O system and disconnects their connected loads from the power supply.

The new function blocks are designed to implement energy management of entire sections of plant. They make use of the new I device (Intelligent Device) Profinet function that allows I/O communication between individual CPUs and higher-level or central controllers.