Energy Consumption Measurement with a Multichannel Measurement System on a machine tool

Considering the energy consumption of machine tools, in the future manufactures will face not only economic and environmental, but eventually statutory challenges as well, if machine tools are subjected to the European directive on Energy-using Products (EuP). From a life cycle engineering perspective, the knowledge of energy consumption during the use phase is crucial. Currently, there is no established method of measuring the energy consumption of machine tools, and due to the variety of products, it is not obvious to propose one. A comprehensive measurement system is seen as a basis for online energy monitoring, which can be used to control the consumption of energy and costs from a TCO-point of view and to provide overall less energy consuming production methods with higher reliability. The used measurement system was implemented on several machine tools to determine the main energy consumer and its behavior on different settings, such as machine dynamics, cooling, and electronics. The obtained results reveal considerable potentials in energy saving and process efficiency. This paper presents the developed measurement system architecture and related data acquisition as well as an analytical analysis approach. Moreover, an example of energy optimization measures will be described according to the applied analysis. Introduction and Objective “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it." Lord Kelvin Energy is an issue in science, politics and several industrial sectors; up to now, it carries less importance in manufacturing [1]. Due to climate change and environmental reasons, stricter industrial requirements, especially automotive sector [2], costs and resource reasons in the context of green production as well as statutory requirements [3], energy efficiency has become a large research field. The study of the BMWi [5] indicates that the industrial sector in Germany has a predominant share of 47% of the total energy consumption of all sectors. Going deeper into detail of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a machine tool, it can be seen that the use phase of a machine tool is the most relevant phase for energy consumption [6]. Awareness of energy consumption is seen as the basis for further analysis, and optimizations of the energy efficiency of a machine tool. It should also increase the awareness of consumption, provide 1 http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/quotes/ (5.05.2010). 2 ) cos(φ ⋅ ⋅ = eff eff eff I U P the grounds for energy efficiency improvements, and verify the improvements after implementation. This paper introduces a developed multichannel measurement system which is designed to measure the energy consumption of machine tools with its specific energy forms such as electricity and compressed air, to implement and verify improvements.