Transition to a resilient and sustainable energy supply system: Decision support for manufacturing companies

Abstract

Recent developments show that not only material supply chains but also energy supply systems can be hit by strong disruptive forces. This brings new challenges and highlights the importance of a resilient energy supply to the manufacturing industry. These challenges can be solved by implementation of technical solutions and a change of energy supply system designs. However, manifold options available to a company require a methodological approach to rapidly identify the potentially most suitable variants under individual circumstances for a specific factory.This paper introduces a simplified methodology for the first planning steps in the transition towards a resilient energy supply system of production sites. For this purpose, relevant resilience factors are identified and selected for energy supply systems of a factory. With a structured procedure, different technical system combinations are created and evaluated in respect to implementation effort and their potential impact on the resilience factors. Simultaneously, different disruptive scenarios are ranked based on likelihood and expected severity. The impact of these combinations on the energy load profile of the factory is evaluated and the results are presented based on the suitability of each energy supply system alternative in respect to the different disruptive scenarios. This provides information on the potentially most favorable options to the relevant stakeholders for further implementation.To demonstrate the applicability of the developed methodology, a case study on a battery cell factory is presented. The production of batteries is a fast-growing industry with a high relevance for the transition towards a sustainable economy while the battery production itself requires high amounts of electricity and heat at different temperature levels. Alternative supply scenarios besides the unidirectional consumption of fossil fuels are needed in in terms of sustainability and to increase resilience.