Real time electricity demand response for sustainable manufacturing systems: Challenges and a case study

Due to the mounting electricity demand from industrial sector of United States and the expected huge investment for new generation capacity, the significance of load management at the customer side has been gradually recognized by both academia and industry. Compared with many research efforts in long term production planning to shave the peak demand, seldom work on real time electricity demand response while maintaining system throughput for the purpose of grid stability for manufacturing company can be found. In this paper, a brief literature review on system load management is provided and the existing challenges of real time electricity demand response for manufacturing systems are analyzed. Numerical case study about demand response implementation is performed to illustrate the possibility of the significant energy consumption reduction without negative impact on system throughput through appropriate real-time production control.