Energy Efficiency Management of an Integrated Serial Production Line and HVAC System

Modern manufacturing facilities waste many energy savings opportunities (ESO) due to the lack of integration between the facility and the production system. To explore the energy savings opportunities, this paper combines the two largest energy consumers in a manufacturing plant: the production line and the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The concept of the energy opportunity window (OW) is utilized, which allows each machine to be turned off at set periods of time without any throughput loss. The recovery time of each machine is the minimum amount of time a machine must be operational between opportunity windows to guarantee zero production loss and it is explored both analytically and numerically. 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 studies.