Energy-efficient management of a wood industry facility

The energy-efficient management of complex industrial plants is a non-trivial task. While the traditional approach to improve energy systems efficiency is based on advanced hardware design, it is nowadays known that advanced management systems offer a unique opportunity to significantly enhance both efficiency and performance by mostly acting on software components. In this paper we consider the problem of managing a wood industry facility from an energy point of view. This kind of complex plant for processing and drying wood makes use of CHP and boiler units, renewable energy sources, and the electrical grid to meet its energy needs. Specifically, a model-based, repeated optimization scheme is applied, that exploits CHP and boiler efficiency models coupled with a nature-inspired numerical optimization algorithm. The proposed method is employed in a Matlab-based simulation environment. The simulation results show that the identified strategy maximizes profit while meeting the plant energy needs.