Energy efficiency management of an integrated serial production line and HVAC system

Modern manufacturing facilities waste many energy savings opportunities (ESO) through the lack of integration between the facility and the production system. This paper combines the two largest energy consumers in the manufacturing plant: the production line and the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system to explore the different energy savings opportunities. The concept of the energy opportunity window (OW) is utilized for each machine to turn machines off at set periods of time without any throughput loss. The recovery time of each machine is explored analytically. This provides the minimum amount of time a machine must be operational between opportunity windows to guarantee no production loss. The opportunity window for the production line is synced with the peak periods of energy demand for the HVAC system to create a heuristic rule to optimize the energy cost savings. This integrated system is modeled and tested using simulation case studies.