Equipment energy consumption management in digital twin shop-floor: A framework and potential applications

With increasing attentions focused on the energy consumption (EC) in manufacturing, it is imperative to realize the equipment energy consumption management (EECM) to reduce the EC and improve the energy efficiency. Recently, with the developments of digital twin (DT) and digital twin shop-floor (DTS), the data and models are enriched greatly and a physical-virtual convergence environment is provided. Accordingly, the new chances emerge for improving the EECM in EC monitoring, analysis and optimization. In this situation, the paper proposes the framework of EECM in DTS and discusses the potential applications, aiming at studying the improvements and providing a guideline for the future works.

I. Introduction

Manufacturing is a sector with a large amount of energy consumption (EC), which leads to serious environment problems, e.g. the toxic smog, global warming and acid rain pollution. Energy consumed by the equipment in shop-floor occupies the most proportion of EC in manufacturing [1]. However, as this part of EC can vary strongly during production, the energy saving potential is great. Hence, researches about equipment energy consumption management (EECM) are abundant, which is devoted to reducing the EC and improving the energy efficiency. The related works are researched briefly as follows.