A Systems Engineering Based Method to Increase Energy Flexibility

The change of the energy supply from conventional to renewable energy sources is a challenge for the whole society. It is a well known fact, that the alteration of energy supply from conventional towards renewable sources causes increasing energy volatility. This requires a change in energy use. When it comes to production matters, energy is a resource, which is available immediately on demand. In future, energy will become a resource, which needs to be considered during the production planning process. The adaption of the energy consumption to the available amount of energy affects the material flow and the order processing. Today, manufacturing systems exhibit a limited amount of energy flexibility caused by their interlinking. The use of possible flexibility potentials, manufacturing systems themselves or their structure needs to be adjusted. For this purpose measures for increasing the energy flexibility have to be built up in a structured way. Based on the systems engineering an approach to design energy flexible manufacturing systems has been developed and will be presented in this paper.