Load Profile Optimization Using Electricity Wholesale Market Price Data for Discrete Manufacturing

Abstract

Several strategies for reducing energy costs can be derived from the energy procurement cost function for Austrian end users of electrical energy. Based on short-term energy procurement on the day-ahead trading floor an optimization problem for cost-optimal scheduling of the load curve of a single plant has been formulated. A preliminary study for an annealing furnace is presented and it is found that the approach can lead to significant savings during periods of volatile prices. Furthermore, the strategy is applicable to any production process that provides sufficient flexibility, and therefore, if the trade-off between peak energy costs is included, can be applied to entire production systems.