Energy efficiency at energy intensive factory - a facility planning approach

Due to energy shortage and energy price increase, energy efficiency is a significant challenge for most factories. In order to get more benefit and become more competitive in the market, energy efficiency should be considered in early planning phase as an essential factor. However, the energy efficiency was often ignored in planning phase in the past decades. For these purposes, a new approach, which can effectively support the analysis and design of facility planning, is presented in this paper. This approach introduces energy efficiency as a key criterion into the planning process. At the same time, material transport costs and manpower costs are also taken into account with the purpose of performing good facility planning from both energy and economic aspects. A practical case study is carried out to validate the correctness and effectiveness of the presented approach.