Data Collection for Energy Monitoring Purposes and Energy Control of Production Machines

Data collection is one major prerequisite for energy efficient production facilities, enabling further analyses by assessing KPIs, condition or status monitoring applications and direct feedback or evaluation of efficiency measures. This paper presents a standardized approach to collect energy relevant data of production machines and their components on the PLCs. Energy data can both be directly monitored on a connected HMI or made available for standard interfaces and saved on a generic data server for monitoring and further computation using Matlab DLLs. Besides monitoring aspects, an approach is presented for empowering machine PLCs with energy control functions, allowing them to switch energy modes (e.g. standby, production-ready, operational) to reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions. An implementation of the energy monitoring and control approach on a milling machine is presented in detail, followed by an overview of its use for energetic optimization.