Energy Efficiency Management and Electricity Demand Response for Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

This doctoral thesis proposes a framework of implementing customer-side electric energy management for manufacturers towards sustainability. The methods developed can facilitate the technological readiness of manufacturing enterprises for the transition towards sustainable manufacturing in a carbon-constrained world. Detailed research tasks of the framework include energy efficiency management, electricity demand response for manufacturing system, and electricity demand response for the entire plant considering combined manufacturing and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. Specifically, the method of real time energy efficiency management for typical manufacturing systems with multiple machines and buffers under the constraint of system throughput is developed. Markov decision process is used to formulate the decision-making process and approximate dynamic programming is used to solve the problem on a real time basis. The implementation of electricity demand response for typical manufacturing systems is also studied. Both event-driven and price-driven programs are considered. After that, plant-level modeling on electricity demand response considering the combined manufacturing system and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system is developed. The findings based on case studies show that with appropriate adjustment of production routines through joint consideration of both production and energy consumption, significant improvement in energy efficiency and reduction of power demand can be accomplished. The research outcomes can be applied to realize an energy-efficient and cost-effective operation mode to achieve the goal of sustainable manufacturing for the U.S. The new methods developed can be implemented in discrete part manufacturing in various industries such as automotive, electronics, appliances, aerospace, etc.