CM2024-09: Maximise RES Usage by Flexible Production Schedules

The project shall investigate methods for adapting the planning of industrial production, i.e., the scheduling of industrial processes, to the availability of renewable energy from local renewable energy sources (RES) and the national electricity grid.

Due to the transition toward 100% renewable sources, the energy production becomes increasingly volatile. PV and wind are intermittent renewable energy sources, volatile but quite predictable if averaged on an hourly basis and across the national grid, as can be seen on www.energy-charts.info.

The primary objective and innovation of the project is to enable industries to plan their processes according to a predetermined yet dynamic renewable energy availability in such a way that the CO2 footprint is minimised while still ensuring efficient utilisation of manufacturing resources.

Not only shall the power demand be served by maximally green power generation but also volatile RES shall become optimally utilised, locally and across the electricity grid.

The challenge resides in the economic constraints on production efficiency and the inherent prediction uncertainties, which both increases with planning horizons and process interdependencies.

The optimisation of production processes considering energy efficiency is common knowledge (TRL9). Considering the time-of-use dependent CO2 footprint of electricity from the public grid, is very new (TRL2). Raising latter to TRL4/5 is the intended aim.