Models for Model-Based User-Centric Energy Analysis of Industrial Automation Systems

Recent reports and outlooks on electrical energy show a persistently widening gap between electrical energy generation and electrical energy demand. Thus, energy costs are a significant determining factor in economic and social prosperity. Consequently, politics, industry and research focus on both exploitation of alternative energy sources for energy generation and development of concepts, methodologies and technologies to reduce energy consumption. A remaining challenge is energy analysis and optimization of complex systems, such as industrial automation systems. Individuality and dynamics of the system's surroundings during operation make it difficult to identify goal-oriented optimization measures. This contribution proposes a model-based user-centric approach for automated energy analysis. The approach supports users in reducing their energy costs by automated generation and application of individual electrical energy optimization proposals for their industrial automation systems. The focus of this paper is complexity reduction of this task by mapping elements and influences with impact on electrical energy costs to appropriate models for model-based analysis of a single system.