Challenges of Energy Management in Industry

Session 7, Paper 1, CIBSE ASHRAE Technical Symposium, Dublin, Ireland, 3-4 April 2014

Energy Management is vital to reducing industry energy costs, which improves viability of enterprises and enables the fulfilment of energy/CO2 reduction targets. Knowledge of energy use is paramount, however often expensive sub-metering is not in the correct location as time of machine operation and profile of energy use is not understood. Subsequently understanding and correcting this data error is difficult to perform in an environment where production cannot be interrupted.
The challenges of data collection and management are addressed through the development of production models and machine profiles that build up a picture of factory operations based on existing data. A two-dimensional picture of factory line operations using machine profiles utilises the real data from sub-meters as a validation mechanism with the completed process model utilised as an indication of arising production inefficiencies. This work outlines the developments in this approach.