Interactive energy demand, production and usage optimization in manufacturing

Renewable energy resources and improvements in energy generation and usage are critical policies of energy dependent countries. 2012 BP report states that 48 % of both electricity and natural gas consumptions are realized by industrial usage. In developing countries manufacturing sites are increasing at least 4% a year. Cogeneration is a good solution for the efficiency improvement since it reduces costs about 30%–50% compared to the individual usages. In the whole Globe, only 9% of the energy demand is responded by cogeneration systems. One of the barriers of cogeneration implementation is the visionary difference among the production groups and the energy management groups. Researches state that, defining requirements per turbine and planning the load capacity provides incremental benefits. Energy generation plans for trading energy with the grid allow further economic advantages. This paper is one of the rare studies on integrating the energy load plans and the production plans. The combined plans can be updated interactively either by the energy management or by the manufacturing sites. The proposed mixed integer-programming (MIP) model allows using scenarios, which would allow considering energy costs per unit of product. The objective of the study is to reduce energy costs in parallel with the production costs. The proposed system is constructed for the stock- based production type where energy costs have an important share in the operational costs. The system can be used both with a single fuel resource or hybrid renewable resources.