Studies on Customer Side Electricity Load Management for Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

Customer side electricity load management is considered a promising means to reduce the electricity demand during peak periods. The potential greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced and the investment for the building and operating peaking power generators can be cut down. Compared with the mature research of the electricity load management for the customers in residential and commercial building sectors, very few studies dedicating to the industrial manufacturing systems have been implemented. This thesis presents two customer-side electricity load management methodologies, i.e., electricity demand response and on-site generation for the typical manufacturing systems to help the manufacturers reduce the energy consumption during peak periods and overall electricity related cost. We first focus on the electricity demand response for typical manufacturing systems with multiple machines and buffers. Critical Peak Pricing (CPP), a typical electricity demand response program, is selected for mathematical modeling establishment using a Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP). The optimal production schedule and corresponding capacity reservation under the CPP program are identified by minimizing the overall cost. After that, the methodology focusing on the utilization of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) energy systems are presented and likewise, a MINLP model is established to optimize the schedule of production system and CHP system. Two case studies are conducted for both models to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.