An energy consumption evaluation methodology for a manufacturing plant

The energy efficiency of manufacturing systems is a topic of paramount interest, and reliable methods for modeling the energy consumption of machine tools are of fundamental importance for the design and management of production plants. For these reasons, this paper proposes a approach, named aCtuatorS Methodology (CSM), for modeling and predicting the energy behavior of discrete systems, i.e. systems where the energy consumption is mainly due to the on/off switching of the actuators governed by the control logic. CSM is then used to compute the energy consumption of the pallet transport line of a de-manufacturing pilot plant. A dynamic Discrete Event Simulator (DES) is first used to estimate the instantaneous overall energy consumption based on the absorbed power of each actuator and to complete a preliminary simulation study. The value of the energy consumption estimated with CSM is then compared to the real value measured on the transport line. The results achieved confirm the very good agreement between the behavior of the system predicted with CSM and the measured data.