Electrical Load Management for Production Equipment Applying a Decentralized Optimization Approach

Energy consumption in production and costs are gaining growing concern in production management. One major cost driver concerning electrical energy is often peak load management, motivated through peak load costs. Peak loads are caused by multiple production machines running energy intensive process patterns simultaneously. Although production planning assigns production tasks to certain time slots, the exact execution times - and therefore the times certain energy consumptions are conducted – are determined by shop floor control. Consequently, peak load management can achieve best results when applied by shop floor control/management. In this paper, a load management approach developed for a Siemens plant is introduced, using a decentralized, agent based approach.