An advanced energy management framework to promote energy awareness

Increasing energy costs, new environmental legislation, and concerns over energy security are driving efforts to increase industrial energy efficiency across the European Union and the world. Manufacturers are keen to identify the most cost-effective techniques to increase energy efficiency in their factories. To achieve the desired efficiency improvements, energy use should be measured in more detail and in realtime, to derive an awareness of the energy use patterns of every part of the manufacturing system. In this paper, we propose a framework for energy monitoring and management in the factory. This will allow decision support systems and enterprise services to take into consideration the energy used by each individual productive asset and related energy using processes, to facilitate both global and local energy optimization. The proposed framework incorporates standards for energy data exchange, on-line energy data analysis, performance measurement and display of energy usage. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.