Strategic energy management in industry 4.0 environment

Abstract

One of the latest innovations in the industrial environment was the emergence of Industry 4.0. Along with numerous challenges, there are many chances for companies in it. Besides automation, energy efficiency and energy flexibility is becoming increasing important. Because of the planned phasing-out of nuclear power and high prices for energy, it is important for companies to reduce their energy consumption in order to reduce cost and stay compatible in market place. Therefore strategic energy management plays an important role in overcoming these obstacles. Implementation of energy management is often based on standards and norms with the DIN EN ISO 50001 being the most important. Energy monitoring is a key factor for the successful execution of energy management. For energy monitoring of Industry 4.0 production plants, a cloud based energy monitoring and management system was developed. This solution allows users to monitor their production in real time enabling them a possibility of condition monitoring, energy flexible planning of production based on historic data and energy management along with load management. The detailed concept of the cloud based totally integrated energy management system, beginning with data acquisition to data analysis and visualization is presented in this paper.