Determination of the technical energy flexibility of production systems

Besides the energy efficiency approach to reduce energy demands of production systems there are also other possibilities to decrease the energy related operating costs. Amongst others avoiding long-term peak loads represents a common measure. In possible future cases a flexible energy demand of factories can also be refunded by the energy provider within new tariff structures. The potential of factories and their production facilities to alternate their energy demand to shortly changing energy costs is mostly unknown. This paper shows the potentials of production systems to influence their energy demand within productive state, which is also referred to as technical energy flexibility. The focus is on machines of sensitive main processes, where an influence on the energy demand could induce distinct negative effects on the product quality. It is shown how and to which extent the energy demand of production systems can be controlled without negative effects.